Requiem Aeternam
by Harmenator
Summary: Temeraire and Iskierka lose their captains and are stranded in the Amazon jungle, where they slowly lose their sanity...
1. Chapter 1

It was nearly morning: a certain pallid quality to the sky behind the mountains ahead of them as they flew back to the city, Temeraire carrying a couple of extra cooked llamas, which he meant to show to Gong Su for his approbation. "What is going on, there?" Iskierka said suddenly, as they drew near: smoke was coming from one of the palace wings, one Temeraire quickly recognized as the one where their company was located.

They landed in a courtyard, which to their horror was littered with dozens of dead bodies and debris. Temeraire froze when he saw Laurence, lying against the wall, a pool of blood surrounding him. It was coming from a small hole in the side of his head. Temeraire knew what a bullet-wound meant in that place of the body of a human.

He touched Laurence with his nose, and the lack of movement proved his fears true. His captain was dead. In the background Iskierka shrieked, and Temeraire knew that could only mean that she found her Granby.

Time stopped. Temeraire's joints felt weak, he was about to fall to the ground when a torrent of fire engulfed the courtyard. He could somehow tell that it was not Iskierka's fire, and when he looked up he saw one of the black-yellow Flamme-de-Gloire's flying away from them. The fire had hurt, but it was only a background sensation as both went aloft, chasing their opponent, thirsty for revenge. He saw that the French dragon was luring them to another one of his species, and he didn't care. He noticed Lien on a rooftop beside them, and didn't look as he flew past. His wings started to hurt as dozens of arrows punctured the membrane, yet he only accelerated.

When he thought he was close enough, he roared at the Flamme-de-Gloire, taking it down along with a good portion of the palace. Iskierka spew fire simultaneously, and her flames were scattered by the divine wind, setting the new ruins ablaze. The French beast was no longer alive, but Iskierka kept firing at it, releasing the acrid smell of burnt flesh.

"You killed Granby!" she screamed at the garbled corpse, despite the men's fate obviously inflicted by humans. "You killed him! You did it! You took him from me!"

As two more Flamme-de-Gloire's and dozens of Incan dragons filled the sky, fear replaced anger in Temeraire's veins. "We have to go." he said quietly to Iskierka, who was still yelling at the now thoroughly charred remains. She looked up, and then at Temeraire, and not even a tiny shred of fear could be noticed in her eyes, underneath all the rage.

Temeraire roared upwards, and a beast fell down, quickly replaced by others. They were too spread out to be able to hit more, and Iskierka roaring invitations to duel her wasn't helping either. One of them accepted by pinning her tail to the ground, but he quickly regretted the act as he was impaled on her spikes, and then seared by the hot steam. His sacrifice had not been for naught, as having a middle-weight stuck to one's tail was not an improvement to one's flight.

Temeraire dodged attacks and roared at Iskierka, who was now getting quite covered by dragons, even more anxiously urging her to fly away, but she was still in a blood rage, clawing at whichever beast was in her reach.

"Stop you monstrosity and look! She is the one who really killed Granby!" pointing to Lien, who had held back, enjoying the spectacle. Iskierka looked and nodded, but was unable to fly under the weight of the Incan beasts. Temeraire flung his long tail and slapped most of them off, as many were scarcely the size of Winchesters.

They went aloft, storming at Lien, who quickly flew away, just as Temeraire had expected. She was heading towards the edge of the plateau on which the city was located. Then, she suddenly arced up, made half a loop, corkscrewed and was suddenly flying over and away from them.

Iskierka wasted no time to try to imitate this impressive stunt, but Temeraire launched himself atop her, grabbing hold of the numerous spikes and he folded his own wings, effectively dragging her down into the valley. Iskierka was baffled and furiously beat her wings but could no longer gain altitude, and when Temeraire deflated his air sacs a little they started gliding downwards into the valley.

"What are you…" she started, just when the terrible sound of the Divine Wind prevented all communication. Lien had miscalculated the distance, they were too far away to be seriously hurt, but their bones and spikes rattled and the wind blew them downwards even faster.

Right when they would hit the treetops, Iskierka remembered to fold her own wings so the fragile membrane wouldn't be torn apart by the branches, and they tumbled into the jungle. The leaves formed a roof above them, and suddenly it was very quiet.

"What did you do that for!" growled Iskierka, while shaking off vines which had stuck to her spikes while falling through the trees.

"You know what I did that for. There were hundreds of dragons ready to tear us apart!" Temeraire said, exaggerating in an attempt to keep her from rushing back.

"I could have had them. I could have defeated every single one of them!"

"I am sure you would have easily defeated every _single_ one of them, but not all of them at once."

Temeraire paused before continuing: "This valley is huge. Lien is the only one who saw where we landed, and I bet she will consider it below her standing to go down this stinking jungle and search behind every tree for us."

"You can hardly call that a landing, the way you dragged me down and into this terrible forest."

"If I hadn't done it you would have rushed back and gotten yourself killed."

"Why do you care if I get myself killed? You only care about that stupid Laurence and I'm glad he's dead!"

Temeraire swallowed his grief and then replied quasi-calmly:  
"I care because your egg was placed in my responsibility back in Istanbul. Three eggs, actually. The first one was destroyed, seconds after I first touched it. Then I swore to myself not to let anything bad happen to the other two. You hatched and I gave you my first lieutenant. I carried you for thousands of miles over French armies and the cold ocean, and all you did in return was getting heavier and burning everything in sight. I managed to get you safely to England, only because it was my duty to the King whom I have never met, and because Laurence told me so, and because you were still being as stupid as an egg. Even though you are now a great deal bigger, you are still so stupid you are an egg to me, and I feel responsible for you."

He paused. "Now that I have figured this out for myself, I no longer care if you get yourself killed or not. You can now either go back to Lien and die like Granby, or you can join them if you want and have fun with Maila, or you can follow me to the Portuguese on the other side of the continent, as they are the only nation in the area we are not at war with, with no thanks to you. They will take us back to Britain and we will fight Napoleon along with all of our friends, where we do stand a chance. The sun is not up yet, we can still slip past their patrols and make some good distance as we head for the Atlantic Ocean."

Iskierka did not know how to respond, so she didn't. They went aloft, and managed to escape the Cusco area unnoticed… or so they thought.

"Shall I send my _Ayllu_ after them?" the Sapa Inca asked.

"Oh, don't bother my dear, there is just no way two dragons without a crew can cross the great Amazon rainforest." said Napoleon Bonaparte. "Now let's make preparations for the wedding."


	2. Chapter 2

At the third day, six hours after they saw the last sign of civilization, Temeraire said: "I think we have finally left Pusantinsuyo behind us."

Neither of them had eaten nor slept properly in the past seventy-two hours. They were too distressed for either. The days were simple: waking up from their nightly torments with sunrise, a brief discussion about whether it rose in the east or in the west, flying until sunset, and then lying down thinking about their captains. They did not talk about it, as their feelings were mostly mutual. Still, Iskierka focussed more on her revenge on Napoleon and Lien, and kept asking for the approximate time it would take to reach the coast, and from there to Rio, to which Temeraire could not reply with much accuracy.

"What's that?" Iskierka asked softly.

"You spent days persuading the Sapa Inca to take Granby as her husband, and weeks making friends with that flimsy Yupanqui, yet you have already forgotten the local name for… why are you descending?"

Iskierka dove, and came back up a minute later, holding two small deer. She threw one at Temeraire, much like she would do on their journey through Terra Australis. He caught it in his mouth, was about to say he wasn't hungry but realised he was and swallowed the animal without chewing.

"Thank you." he managed. And then it was silent for another six hours.

When night fell, Temeraire roared enough trees down so they could land. As they were dragging the plants away he found that the Divine Wind had accidentally killed a cougar mother and three cubs. He ate the little ones and tossed the mother to Iskierka, who devoured it in one bite.

When he lied down, he found that Iskierka wasn't just dragging the fallen wood away, but was purposely dropping it on a large cone-shaped heap. When she was done, she fetched two pieces of wood and threw one at Temeraire, who accepted it hesitantly. At closer inspection it turned out to be approximately the size of a human, and broken off at that length on purpose.

Iskierka placed her log carefully in the middle of the heap, and looked at it for a little while. She then closed her eyes, and spew flames at the log, then went aloft and kept firing the heap while flying around it. The wood was moist and it would not burn properly, but she kept at it for the better part of the night.

Temeraire looked at his own log. He thought of Laurence. This was the third time he had lost him. First in Africa, where he had vanished without a trace. It had taken him weeks, studying every blade of grass for clues and asking even the fiercest ferals for directions, but he had found him and brought him back.

The second time he lost him was in England, where the report of his death reached him in the breeding grounds. It had depressed him for days, until Perscitia snapped him out of it and he somehow organised sixty lazy, quarrelling dragons into an army and achieved victories on the French army, before finding out Laurence was alive after all.

This time there was nothing to be done. He knew were his captain was, and had no way to fight his murderers.

He closed his eyes, and pushed the log that was Laurence in the little stream they had just drunk from. He counted to a hundred before opening his eyes, and when he did Laurence was gone.

Iskierka's bonfire was still ablaze when she and Temeraire finally went to sleep, at a little distance from each other. They tried to sleep, but the fire drew hundreds of little creatures who looked about as much as squirrels as monkeys. They uttered caws, bawls and shrieks, and a while a roar yielded twenty dead monkeys it attracted even more, and fire did much the same. Sleeping was impossible.

"Why can't we fly now? " complained Iskierka, to which Temeraire replied negatively, although the thought had crossed his mind more than once.

"How would we know where to go? I know where the sun rises and sets, but haven't learned all the thousands of stars by name."

"Granby did. He could tell where to go even at a cloudy night."

"That's because he had a compass. And it is common knowledge that you can't travel in a straight line without any points of reference, like the sun."

"Can we then at least go to some place that has no monkeys?"

In a jungle, a place without monkeys was hard to find, as they couldn't simply land between the trees, and roaring them down woke the pests up.

When the sun finally rose, Temeraire saw that they had been going in the wrong direction all night. He couldn't care less. They hunted for some more deer, which were very sparse in the rainforest. At the end of the sixth day they were very hungry and very tired, when they stumbled upon a mighty river.

"We can sleep on the beach without you having to roar." Although there were still a few hours of daylight left, Temeraire agreed and they lied down in the mud, which would have been very uncomfortable had they not been so dreadfully tired.

They slept until sometime after midnight Iskierka suddenly roared and swung her tail in all directions. It was too dark to see, and only after she blew some flames in frustration did Temeraire see that a dark-coloured caiman had bitten himself stuck on the end of Iskierka's tail. Chasing your own tail was hard enough to do in broad daylight, and in the middle of the night it took them half an hour before the now long-dead animal was decapitated, leaving its head stuck in her flesh.

Of course their fight with the caiman had drawn more monkeys, and they had to fly quite some distance downstream before another suitable location was found. Sadly, this place had bats, which stung them like mosquitoes did to humans, waking them up several more times during the night.

"Maybe we should try sleeping in the day and flying through the night?" Temeraire asked hopefully, as yet another unsatisfying night had gone by.

It was attempted but still left them still tired, as sleeping in the bright sunlight was not much easier than sleeping through monkey noises.

"Now, that part of the new plan works somewhat, now let's try flying in the night."

"But how will we navigate? I told you I don't know the stars."

"That's easy. We start at sunset and fly away from it, and keep that course throughout the night, and when the sun rises we will see it ahead of us!"

Temeraire's sleep-deprived brain could see nothing wrong with that plan, and paid no attention to his earlier protests.


	3. Chapter 3

It was in the early morning of the tenth day when they saw the first feral dragon they had encountered so far. The little creature was green, like the forest, and fast as the wind. Still Temeraire chased it, asking it in both Quechua and Durzagh how his species was able to sleep in this dreadful jungle. It dove into a bush and vanished without a trace.

Five days later he spotted another one, purplish blue this time, and went directly in pursuit.

"Come here you! Do you realise how selfish it is of you not to tell us how to survive in this dreadful place? We are only passing through, do you know where Rio is? Do you?" He didn't notice that he had said it in English this time, and the feral's shrieks of distress only aggravated the tired celestial all the more.

The dragon dove in between the leaves like the other one had done. "No, not again!" growled Temeraire as he folded his wings and dove after him. Only when he had the little beast pinned to the ground under his claws did he notice that they were no longer alone.

They had landed near a small river mostly covered by trees, and thus unnoticeable from above, but at regular intervals little bays were dug in the shore. The bays held lots of eggs, the warm water keeping them at the right temperature consistently, and all of them were guarded by at least one feral.

Temeraire had no time to react. The dozens of creatures landed atop him, clawing at him and pulling his limbs. A loud snap preceded terrible pain when one of the larger beasts landed on his left wing and started pulling and twisting it in unnatural directions.

Roaring was useless at such a close range, and the weight of the attackers prevented him from drawing in a deep breath needed for the Divine Wind. He felt more bones pop, and thought that this must have been the end.

But Iskierka did not agree with him on that, and engulfed the area with her fire. "Stop it Iskierka, you are hurting me as much as them!" was barely audible with the limited breath he had got, but the Kazilik heard and instead focussed her fire around her while trying to pushing the other dragons away.

Their attempts were futile. Holding the attackers off while liberating Temeraire was impossible, and the latter was still pinned to the ground in increasing pain. He thought of asking Iskierka to go away, find the Portuguese alone and leave him to die, grabbing her opportunity to escape.

Before he could voice his proposal, one of the ferals not in the brawl screamed something in a language not entirely unlike Durzagh, and all of the dragons atop Temeraire quickly went for the river. After a quick moment of confusion, a giant anaconda lifted itself from the river and went for the eggs. Temeraire thought to himself that he now knew why the eggs were so heavily guarded, and he stumbled away with Iskierka while the feral dragons were busy fighting off the snake, which must have been over 150 feet long.

When they found a quiet place Iskierka quickly inspected the damage. A few broken ribs were only the least of his injuries, the broken left wing hurt painfully, one end of the bone had penetrated the skin and dark blood swelled from it.

"I once saw Keynes treat an injury like this one, we have to splint it!" growled Temeraire through his pain.

"How do we do that?"

"Well, first we have to put the bone in the right place. I am sure if you pull the end of my wing it will slide back."

"Like this?" but even touching the disabled limb lightly resulted in a big roar of pain and several trees splintering. "Yes, grab that and pull hard!"

He quickly reached for a log to bite on, but was too late for Iskierka had already started pulling. "Stop squirming around if you want it healed!"

"I do want it healed, it just hurts to much! Try again!" Temeraire said through the log, throat getting hoarse from the screaming. Iskierka granted him no rest and immediately pulled harder than before, and this time the bone snapped right into place.

She quietly waited until Temeraire stopped bawling before asking: "What's next?"

"Now we bind a piece of wood to the bone to stop the bone from shifting around, until it starts to heal on its own."

"And how do you plan on binding a piece of wood to anything if you don't have rope?"

"Look at those branches. Some of them are long and completely envelop the tree. I believe Hammond called them lianas, and they are flexible. That will have to do for rope."

It then took Iskierka five minutes to gather enough of the lianas and a log the right size. "And how do we tie it around the bone, your wing membrane is in the way."

"I thought of that, and I think the only way is for me to fold my wing, and then to tie all of it to my body, keeping it in place. I will not be able to make sharp movements but I believe Keynes said a splint was only needed for a month or two, and by then we should have already reached Rio."

"If you say so." and their plan was executed exactly as Temeraire had proposed. Neither of them could tie knots, so he had to hold the lianas against his side with his right front leg, leaving three to walk with, which was what they were going to be doing from now on.

"It was very stupid of you, to run to the feral nest and get your bones broken, now it will take even longer to reach Portugal."

"That makes us both monstrosities." said Temeraire, and then they huddled together to sleep.

The lack of flight made them lose even the tiniest sense of direction. The sun was not visible from underneath the trees, the dusky light appeared to be coming from everywhere at once. Iskierka at times tried to fly up, and she would locate the sun, but in the twisting required to land between the branches she often lost her sense of direction. And when she didn't they would still walk mostly in circles.

Worse than the loss of direction were the raids. The feral dragons seemed to have interpreted Temeraire and Iskierka's arrival as an invasion of their territory, and they would do ghastly things to express their disapproval.

They would strike at any time of the day or night. Usually it were three or four beasts who came from the sky, concentrated on injuring one of them, and leaving before the other could help. Sometimes they wouldn't attack for two weeks, and sometimes they would twice in one day. When they discovered that Temeraire was flightless they would target him most of the times, resulting in his improvised splint getting severely damaged and Iskierka refusing to leave him alone for anything besides hunting, which was getting harder as the feral territory was nearly picked clean of game.

By the end of the second month they were starved and covered in scratches and bruises, and reaching Rio was becoming an obsession for them. How to get there was not even thought of, they would just leave in any direction. After all, Rio was in one direction, and the only way to find out which one would be to try them all.

Iskierka also had a clever idea which – like most of her ideas – involved fire. She had seen Dorset close wounds with hot metal bars to prevent infection, and figured her flames would do the same. Temeraire reluctantly offered himself, and found that the scorched scratches no longer bled, and Iskierka would apply the treatment to her own injuries as well. The splint had long been torn apart by now and Temeraire's wing hung limply, its owner afraid to move it.

Rio was on their minds every waking moment, and reaching the city was playing a role in most of their contorted dreams. Everything would be fine once they got there.


	4. Chapter 4

Fernando Pontes of the _Faro_ looked at the uninhabitable green jungle to the west of his ship, as the sea to the east was more even more boring to look at for miles, though not by much. The _Faro_ was a small trading ship on an expedition to the supposedly ruined city of Rio de Janeiro. After British reports got in that the place was not quite as ravaged as they had first thought, Pontes had spent the whole evening convincing his captain that Rio would be in dire need of supplies, and – more importantly – willing to pay thrice the price for the first trading ship to arrive.

Captain Vargas had asked him if he would gamble his career on it. His loyal gunner answered affirmingly, and it was settled. Lieutenant Bento was an older, more timid man who severely doubted this choice. They had had a rivalry since day one, as it was clear that Pontes was Vargas' favourite crew member, despite the twelve years of experience Bento had on him.

A red spot rose above the horizon. Feral dragons were not uncommon along the coastline, which was exactly why the _Faro_ was equipped with a pepper gun along with more cannons than custom for this type of ship.

The red spot came closer rapidly, but the distance was hard to estimate. Pontes grabbed his binoculars, and gasped when he saw that the monster was approximately eight times the size of the usual ferals he had seen and heard of, and heading right for the ship. Shouts, a bell and commands were heard on deck in that order, and the pepper gun was quickly loaded.

"My, my, that's a beauty." said sailor Pontes. He had a bit of experience with dragons as he had fought in the war before he lost his right hand and retreated to trading ships. "Maroon with a purple belly and spikes all over. And a heavyweight!"

"I thought the Amazon area could not support dragons of over ten tons." said Bento.

"They can't, she looks ravenous. Probably escaped from a breeding grounds somewhere and tried her luck in the jungle."

"Perhaps we could lure the beast with food and escort her to Rio, where we can sell her back to the _Força Aérea_?"

"And how do you suppose we keep it with us?" interrupted Captain Vargas, drawn by the sudden activity on deck. "It looks nearly big enough to swallow the ship whole, and certainly hungry enough to try exactly that. Pontes, you will operate the pepper gun, and direct the other gunners should further action be needed. Don't waste gunpowder though, we can sell our extra barrels in Rio, if you are correct, that is."

"Aye captain, we will have her away in no time. I have dealt with the ferals here before, and when they get it in their head to attack a boat they all act the same."

The red dragon came into range. "Now she'll fly around the ship a couple times, provoking us to shoot and miss, and when we are reloading grab someone to take home and eat. Oh, stop trembling you cowards, I'm here to prevent that!" But the feral kept going straight for them, making no evasive manoeuvres whatsoever.

"She's either stupid, blind or crafty, and will be too close to be able to dodge us in a few seconds. _Quatro… três…"_

Bento interrupted: "Wait Pontes, she's saying something! Is that English?"

_ "__Dois, um…_ Fire!" A big canister filled with pepper headed for the face, and hit her right on the snout.

"Impressive shot Pontes!" said Vargas while patting him on the back.

"No captain, while I do agree that my shot was perfectly accurate, it wasn't impressive at all. The beast did not see it coming, clearly hasn't been a feral for long."

"Captain Vargas, I am quite sure I heard her speak English, oughtn't we hold back fire and try to find out what she's saying?"

"Nonsense, do you know anyone aboard this ship who speaks that language? That monster barely uttered three syllables before the pepper hit it. I am convinced the crafty little demon was just trying to confuse us. Thank God that it did not fool Pontes! And now it's headed for shore again, do you want to turn around the ship for a dragon we will not be able communicate with and we will not be able to feed on the hope that we can make some island nation ten thousand miles from here happy?"

Bento paused briefly. "No captain. We will leave Rio with our cargo filled with gold."

"So we shall. Now get back to work."

Iskierka slowly flew back to shore, sneezing and coughing constantly. Her eyes were filling with tears, but they weren't all from the pepper.


	5. Chapter 5

It had been two more months. Or so he thought. The world was no more.

Everything had fallen apart since she had come back with red eyes and dripping nostrils. She had told him, and he had listened. They had entangled themselves, firmly holding each other with limbs and tails. For the other was the only bit of their worlds that was not suffering.

He tried flying again. His muscles were stiff and painful, and the flight ended before it had properly begun. Did it matter? The little appetite he had could be filled with what game he stumbled upon by foot. Which was not much.

The raids of the ferals did not stop. They simply stopped caring. Wounds were no longer scorched closed. Did it matter? Death by infection seemed a whole lot more pleasant than death from starvation. Not that it was easy for a dragon to kill himself. Dragons were creatures full of life and joy. He wasn't. She wasn't.

Aimlessly they travelled for weeks. From tree to tree, from river to river, along the coast, deep inland. Stopping in one place for a month, rushing to places they had yet to uncover. He flew again, now. She didn't. She had strained a muscle in an awkward manoeuvre to dodge a tree. Did it matter? One month rest, said Dorset. Who was Dorset?

What was Rio? What was Pusantinsuyo? What was England? What was Laurence? What was Granby? Did any of them matter?

Every night they would entangle themselves with each other again. Nothing was as comforting as having another living being pressing on you, one who would not hurt you, or take away your sleep, or give you pain. Sometimes they would go a little further. Did it matter? Nothing had deeper meaning. The world was divided up into things that hurt you, and things that didn't. The latter category had only one thing in it, for both of them.

Time lost meaning. She couldn't describe if they had been somewhere for a week or for an hour. Neither could he. Did it matter?

A lingering shadow swept over parts of their lives, growing stronger every day. Every morning, they felt a little weaker. Soon death would embrace them, and the suffering would be over.

Soon.

Flying alone along the coast for no particular reason, he discovered a ship. A big one. British colours in the mast, _HMS Fortunate_ on the stern.

Feeling up to some distraction, he unleashed the Divine Wind, at the water directly below him. Fish died and floated to the top. Nearby birds sprung up from their peaceful lives and chirped their complaints about being disrupted by the noise.

He flew forward while roaring, stopped, flew backwards a bit and started roaring again. Counting wingbeats, he held a steady rhythm of roaring and not roaring, and low, powerful waves sprung up from the sea.

The ship had noticed him. Two dragons appeared in the sky. A Regal Copper and a Longwing. How odd.

Roar, fall back. Roar, fall back. The slow, large waves got higher and higher. The ship was a mile away, but it already started rocking. Soon it would be time for the final wave. The Longwing would spit acid that would tear him apart, he was quite sure of that. The Regal Copper was twice, perhaps thrice his weight. But slow, he was sure the Regal Copper would not reach him before the time was right for the final wave. The last one he would ever make. Did it matter?

She would miss him. He would miss her too. But dying while bringing down the cause of their torment was a better day to die than slowly withering away in the jungle. The cause of their torment. Hm.

"What are you doing, Temeraire!?" he heard the Longwing yell with a mixture of emotions, from quite close range by now. Temeraire. He hadn't heard that name in a while. Could his name be Temeraire? He did not know. He had not spoken a word in at a long time, all of his life for all he knew. Did it matter?

More screaming. A drop of burning acid on his hindquarters. Just some more suffering reporting for duty. Why not unleash all of the poison, he thought. It might even burn him away before he could finish his wave.

Arg, all this thinking made him forget his rhythm. He missed a beat, and the waves started descending again. Now the Regal Copper would surely reach him, and perhaps push him out of the right place for the final roar. He added more power to his voice and the thundering sound travelled over and through the water.

He heard a new sound, in a different language. Chinese poetry, it seemed. He understood what the words meant, but they had no meaning to him. Almost he gave up his roar to correct the voice in some of the pronunciations. Almost.

Voices were distracting. He focussed on counting wingbeats and roaring on time.

"Can I not push him away, into the ocean?" the Regal Copper said, his loud voice barely audible from his concentration.

"He's gone fully mad, he may direct the roar at you. You should not take the chance. Lily, I am sure you are capable of stopping him with your acid." a different voice said.

"But he did not even twitch when I sprayed some on him!" was the Longwing's answer.

"I am sure… You are fully capable... Of stopping him." the human voice said again insistently, with long pauses at several places in the sentence.

But he stopped listening to the voices, it was now time for the final roar. Probably the last thing he would ever do. Did it matter? It most certainly did not!

He flung himself backward and upward, and set in a dive so he would glide over the waves, roaring at the sea, roaring at life, welcoming death.

"NOW LILY!"

He was not a Longwing, but he knew that this was a terrible shot. Most missed him, only a few tiny drops scattered over his body. A quick dive through the waves would wash them off instantly, but he had no time for that. His wings were punctured, but so they had lots of times by many different objects. The holes always healed and closed. What was slightly more worrying was the drop on his head. It started burning through his skull, and would reach his brain in perhaps half a minute. Still plenty of time to finish the wave.

He dove and glided, his massive fan-shaped wings outstretched to their full extent, wet from the water, acid and blood. He roared like he had never roared before, and never would again. This was his final moment. Bringing down this ship was a monument for all he could ever stand for. She would be so happy that he brought down their source of torment.

Source of torment. The drop of acid on his head was tormenting him now, but it could be removed. So could the monkeys, he and she had succeeded in eliminating them wherever they went. The raids of the ferals were omnipresent, there could be no doubt in that. But why would a ship injuring her, injuring Iskierka, still torment them when it must be hundreds of miles away by now?

A short feeling of pressure and a lot of tiny footsteps were recorded by his brain, which had a lot to do at the moment. The calming words spoken out of the general direction of the footsteps told him that someone had jumped on top of him in mid-air, and now ran towards his head without using a safety harness: even the last shred of it had long been lost and destroyed in the jungle.

The man touched and stroked the tendrils around his head. A pleasant sensation came from them, but Temeraire kept roaring. He would do it for Iskierka, since she was tormented by the memory of the ship, and he could destroy a ship, even if it was of a wholly different type and nationality. A green wall of water rose, obscuring the _Fortunate_ from his view.

When no response came, the man crawled on top of his head. Somehow he kept balance, sat on Temeraire's snout and looked him in the eye. Was he trying to obscure his view? He made no such attempts, he only showed his face. A face, looking as tormented as he was. More proof that there was nothing but suffering in the world. At least he could end part of it.

A tear dropped from the man's eye. He turned his head, looked at the ship, barely visible, as a cloudy shape behind the green wall of water. Temeraire's roar hesitated. The man had heard it, and he nodded.

Understanding did not come to Temeraire in a flash, as usually pictured in stories, but dripped in over the course of several seconds. Suffering was not all there was in the world. He could give this one person joy by not destroying the ship, and for some reason felt a strong urge to do so. As the implications of this new idea wandered his mind, the pitch of his roar rose. It was still thundering, but the tone changed frequency and a new, much broader spectrum of sounds was opened. Temeraire's throat and spinal cords twisted, tightened and convulsed, along with one rather peculiar organ unknown to any dragon surgeon on the Western Hemisphere.

The roar turned into a shriek, the shriek into something akin to a whistle and then it left the range audible for humans entirely. Temeraire gave one last push with his powerful midriff, pushing the air from the deepest reaches of his lungs and shattering the tremendous wave into a big salt rain, mere seconds before it would impact on the ship. Water still collided heavily with the sails, snapping and entangling most of the rigging before landing on deck where it flushed several of the sailors into the ocean.

Temeraire had shaken off the cause of his change of mind and dropped him in the water, so he could gain more speed rushing for a red dragon who had to know about the beauty of life.

"Lieutenant Whittaker, because I am having trouble properly phrasing how incredibly stupid, irresponsible and selfish your action was, you may simply consider this your demotion to midwingman." said Captain Harcourt calmly. "Although I must say I am content with the result, the only proper course of action on top of a feral dragon about to destroy one of His Majesty's ships would be to shoot it."

"Captain, I understand and accept my demotion, but I wish to add that if my duty consists of shooting the only Celestial dragon the British Air Force has ever seen, much less employed, then my duty can go to hell." said Whittaker, lifted from the water in Lily's claws.

"I see that even mentioning Captain Laurence has a terrible influence on discipline in this corps. Now let's go get that man back, if he is even still alive."


	6. Chapter 6

_Four months earlier:_

Laurence watched his and Granby's dragons fly away, completely devoid of their usual furious quarrelling over whatever they did not agree on at the moment. Temeraire would take a stance based on what he felt was right, despite whatever the rest of the world had already settled for since time immemorial, while Iskierka would do whatever was in her best interest, often either ignoring or manipulating others in the process of getting what she wanted. Both recalcitrant, yet in such completely different ways. If they would ever agree on something, nobody could stop them. Except they never did.

Not having the faintest clue what had happened to get either of them so cooperative all of the sudden, Laurence pushed the matter to a corner of his mind and settled on a much more important matter: disciplining the hundred terrible sailors who had ended up under his command.

"We know one of you stole a slab of gold from the temple. The priest is highly displeased, and asks it returned immediately."

Nobody in the crowd of sailors assembled before him in the courtyard spoke a word.

"This crime is dishonourable, in that you stole from our host. This crime is imbecilic, as there is no way you can take that gold with you on a dragon without one of us noticing." He paused.

"This crime is treason! It is treason, because we are on a diplomatic mission! The Inca are not our allies! They are about to become our enemies! The only one who can prevent that from happening, is standing next to me." He pointed to Granby, standing very uncomfortable in the centre of attention. He wore a new coat bought from the Inca, which Iskierka had started to cover in gold and jewels almost as soon as she had made friends with the Sapa Inca.

Laurence paced over the podium, improvised by pushing several low tables together. It protested loudly as he stamped on the floor. "This man, standing right next to me, is about to go into a commitment that will change the course of his life. He will sacrifice his career, go live in a foreign country without knowing its history, and attempt to lead it into an alliance against Napoleon Bonaparte. He will sacrifice all of his hopes of ever returning home, to instead marry a foreign woman with whom he has nothing in common."

"Except the way he gazes at Higgins!" said someone in the back, referring to a particularly handsome shipmate, who had indeed drawn a lot of attention from the Inca females.

This was a mild joke, the subject not that uncommon, if spoken in informal company. Among military men, it was mostly frowned upon, but sniggered at when officers where away. In a formal assembly, punishment and withdrawal of rum rations was in order. In a formal reprimand such as this one, flogging and demotion was more likely. But Laurence, having the prior knowledge of the all-too disturbing truth of the bold sailor's notion was enraged. He could not spot the original teller of the joke, but when one of the other men dared to giggle out loud he wasted no time and shot the man in the left arm. The gunshot and his yelp of pain effectively distracted the attention from poor Granby, who was turning as red as the spicy peppers which grew in this country.

He put the gun down, and retrieved a second one from a big basket standing by his side. "I have a hundred pistols in here, all loaded. One for each of you, each bullet going to the next one who dares to interrupt my reprimand and dishonour a crew member. Next time, I will not miss the heart." There were only five guns in the basket, no others had been found on the South American continent, with owners willing to part from them. The bottom was filled with cloth to create the illusion that might sustain discipline throughout the ordeal, which was going to last a while, as it now seemed.

"Mr. Clayton, you may cover your injury with your neckcloth." None of them had neckcloths, most nothing akin to a uniform, but Laurence was not in the mood for forgiveness, so the wounded man who was quickly growing pale had to stop the blood from flowing with his other hand.

"You will now stand in a grid of ten men squared, all facing my way." They quickly obeyed him, but positioned the wounded Clayton in the middle. "Salute me. Put your feet together, raise your arm and put your flattened hand to the side of your head. Salute, and think of God, your king and your country."

All of the men did it, even if it was not even close to a proper salute, which ought to be done in perfect unison. When the first sailor dropped his hand, Laurence unleashed his deadly gaze on him and reached for the gun basket in case the sailor should miss the hint, which he did not. Laurence drew the connection in his mind to Temeraire sometimes opening his mouth in battle as if he was about to roar, to scare dragons away, but that side thought never reached his face.

Another lowered his hand, but he only needed Laurence's gaze to put him straight. After a few minutes all the men understood that this would take a long time, and contemplated.

The evening lingered on, the sun started to set. Clayton fainted from blood loss, but nobody dared to make a move to aid him. When twilight turned into darkness, Incan servants started lighting torches around them.

Laurence kept his eyes at the men, looking for any disturbance, but his thoughts wandered off. Granby had retreated to a corner, also standing but trying very hard not to draw any attention. Laurence pitied him, even if he could not understand the logic behind the man's inversion. Psychology was not something he was interested in, even Temeraire had never wanted him to read for him out of a book on the subject.

When torches started burning out the Inca brought others, and kept replacing them as Laurence had asked, instead of extinguishing them for the night like they usually did.

The night went on. One of the men fell over as he had managed to fall asleep during the ordeal. Their remorseless drilling sergeant fired a bullet into the ground not ten inches from his head, and all the men woke up from their individual strings of thoughts and tried thinking of their king and country as hard as they could.

After what seemed an endless night, the sky behind the mountains on their east turned pallid and stars began to fade. Laurence had barely managed to keep his concentration throughout the hours, but he hoped that it had been worth it.

Twenty-one Incan warriors unexpectedly entered the courtyard, in two rows with a higher-ranked individual in the lead.

"What can I do for you gentlemen? You will have the courtyard back once the sun is up, we have been drilling our soldiers a bit." said Laurence in English, hoping that one of the soldiers understood their language besides Quechua. It appeared they did not, as they kept heading for the centre, where Laurence and the sailors were located.

Suspicion was added to Laurence's mixture of emotions, and he called Granby with him, as two captain could establish a bigger sense of authority for those ignorant of their ranks, or so he thought. Granby had fallen asleep leaning to the wall, but woke up yawning and quickly went for Laurence when he heard the command even from his dreams. His pace quickened when another twenty-one Inca entered the courtyard from a different entrance. More were coming.

"At ease, men. We do not want to cause any trouble." The sailors thankfully dropped their arms from the salute, and robbed their sore muscles. Some even sat down on the ground to give their legs some rest.

Five more groups of Inca had arrived. They were now in the majority, and the British had no weapons besides the four loaded guns still in the basket, and the two swords of Granby and Laurence.

Without any conversation, or commands among the Inca, they attacked. The first group stabbed their spears into the tired sailors, who had no chance of survival. Laurence grabbed the pistols from the baskets and shot at the Incan superiors, hitting three out of four with his guns. Not taking the time to reload, he drew his sword and fended off the Inca, trying to keep them off the sailors who were unarmed. But he and Granby were just as tired, having stood all night long as well.

One of the attackers grabbed his spear with two hands close to the middle and swung the blunt end at the side of Granby's head, who dropped down instantly. The Inca then stabbed the sharp end in Granby's chest in a swift and fluid motion, and took the life out of him.

The great feeling of distress from the death of a dear friend gave Laurence new energy. He angrily stabbed an unfortunate Inca at the heart, driving his Chinese sword in all the way to the crossguard. It came out smoothly, but the warrior fell on him, drooling slippery blood all over his coat. Gunshots were heard, but none in his direction.

He cut more men down. Spears were hard to dodge but not very manoeuvrable, and it did not take an excellent swordsmen to push the tip aside and then leap forward and stabbing the attacker in the gut, or slicing open some other part of his body. As the number of sailors still alive kept dwindling down, Laurence got more opponents, and his battle got harder.

A loud bang and a sudden sharp pain in the head ended Laurence's violent adventure. The Inca who had fired the gun was still surprised from the sound of the device, not having used it that often. Nonetheless the bullet had hit Laurence in the side of the head, below and behind the ear, at the base of his skull, making him stumble and then fall, and when he hit his head against the wall the world instantly went black for him.


	7. Chapter 7

Demane opened his eyes and smelled the air. "Blood is being shed."

"What?" answered Sipho, who always slept in the bed next to him.

"Let's find out what's happening."

"Do we have to do this now? Maybe they are butchering llamas or something." Still, Sipho obeyed his older brother and started pulling his clothes together. Demane grabbed his four pistols which he had snatched, from people who didn't take good enough care of them, in his opinion. When Laurence had asked everyone for their firearms last afternoon, Demane had hid his under the mattress, and Laurence, knowing his love of the weapons, had asked him no second time.

On the way out of the sleeping quarters, Demane handed over one of the guns to Sipho, who held it in his small, trembling fingers like a treasure. "I really should start training you to use a pistol." the older brother said, disappointed. "All you do is reading those books of Laurence's. It is not healthy to be doing that for long periods, I am sure of it. We will start in two hours, I have scouted the area and know of a secluded valley not far from here where we can practice." he slowed his pace after the next turn, his eyes on the courtyard.

"In fact, we may very well have to start right now…" he whispered. After seeing the condition of the British side in the bloody brawl, he added: "No, we will start some other day. Right now we have to warn the dragons, only they can make the difference when fighting hordes of these Inca."

"But Iskierka and Temeraire have not yet returned!"

"Then we will signal them. With fire. Burn every piece of greenery you can find around here, they will make the most smoke. Use the torches. And whatever you do, do not enter the fight. There's over a hundred Inca soldiers, armed with spears and some with guns. You are just a little boy holding your first pistol."

Sipho wanted to say something back, but instead yelped when he saw a warrior ten feet from him stab Granby, who was lying on the ground, with a spear in his ribcage. The weapon seemed to have stopped prematurely, as when the man retracted it, a large golden medallion was revealed to have folded itself around the tip, preventing it from protruding Granby's chest fully, instead stopping it halfway in. Before the man could give it another try, Sipho experimentally pointed the pistol and pulled the trigger with both fingers. The man dropped dead, right on top of his victim.

It was quite a lucky shot, but Demane showed his little brother one of his rare, sanguinary smiles that made the dark face look scary, even to those who knew him. "Maybe there's still hope for you. Now, get to work, while I go warn Kulingile and the aviators."

Plants were not hard to come by, and it only took Sipho a minute or two to make a large pile of them on the edge of the courtyard, which he lit using the many torches hanging from the walls. While he was at it, the fight had turned for the worse for the British side. Laurence, mad from Granby's death, had managed to hold the Inca off him for longer than any of the sailors, who were currently all dead or dying. A gunshot to his head had put a stop to his resistance, and he slammed his head heavily against the wall when he dropped to the floor, where he stopped moving.

A younger Inca yelled something in Quechua, and all of them suddenly left the courtyard, mere moments before the sun was blocked by black and red wings, casting large shadows on the bloody ground before the dragons themselves landed. Sipho had been hiding behind a dead sailor he recognized as Clayton, stabbed in the back by multiple spears, one of which still stuck in his body.

He wanted to run to Temeraire, but before he could reach him the dragon found Laurence among the dead. He froze instantly, and Sipho thought to go for Iskierka instead, who was turning over bodies trying to find her Granby. She found him as well, his face turned very pale and his lips and fingers blue. He no longer looked human.

Sipho yelled at them to go away, but Iskierka shrieked and blocked all other sounds. He had no chance to say anything more because the courtyard was suddenly on fire. A Flamme-de-Gloire had come near and foolishly thought that a few flames would stop two dragons who had just lost their captains. The two went aloft and chased the French beast out of Sipho's view.

Roaring, bright lights, and barbaric animal cries terrified Sipho and indicated that a heavy fight was on. Kulingile landed in the bloody courtyard. Sipho jumped on top, screaming: "Demane! Laurence and Granby are dead, and Temeraire and Iskierka are fighting a firebreather and we must go help them!"

Demane answered his little brother with misery in his voice: "They are fighting the entire Incan Aerial Forces right now, Lien with them. It would be suicide to try to help them."

"But we must! They did so much for us, and we can't abandon them!"

"Captain Demane is right." said Hammond, only a bit more firmly. "We can't help them. A dragon who has lost his captain with the murderer in sight cannot be reasoned with. If they notice us, we are doomed."

"But… Laurence…"

"We will take the captains' bodies with us, to give them a proper burial when we have time. It is the only thing we can do for them. Captain Demane, please tell Kulingile to do so, and then we can make use of this valuable distraction the Kazilik and the Celestial have provided us. We may only hope that they manage to take out Lien or Napoleon before their time is up."

Demane softly passed the orders, and Kulingile took both bodies carefully in his claws, and then they flew away, dodging the battlefield in a wide arc, but making sure to take on the good course: east. Just when they had flown over the first mountain ridge they heard the Divine Wind, and then silence.

Spontaneously, Forthing made the sign of the cross, and all people on board followed, except Gong Su, who said something quietly in Chinese. "Amen." Forthing whispered, and they left the valley, intending to make as many miles as possible before the sun rose, which they would have done, had Emily not interrupted them by whispering: "I think I saw Granby move."

"Could it not have simply been the wind, dear?" said Mrs. Pemberton, not wishing to encourage miracle-thinking in the young mind.

"No, I saw Laurence move his leg as well. I am sure of it."

"We can't waste valuable time," Hammond started, but Forthing interrupted him: "Sir, I saw both of them move. We must land and examine their condition immediately!"

"Fair enough, if you all think it is best to stay near the nation who we have barely escaped with our lives, then by all means – dear God, I just saw them move as well. Demane, land!"

Both turned out alive, but in bad condition. Granby's bluish skin had spread to around his mouth, but he still breathed, if very, very weakly. Laurence was breathing only slightly more powerful, but he was losing a lot of blood from his head injury.

Two of the aviators knew three different resuscitation techniques, and despite their quarrelling they managed to make Granby a bit less blue, and a quick improvised bandage stopped Laurence from bleeding too heavily, but more treatment was impossible, not having a doctor with them.

"We could at least keep them stable like this, while we go to Rio. How many days is the journey?" asked Hammond.

"Several weeks, I am afraid." replied Ferris, but none of them knew anything better to do, so they prepared binding Granby and Laurence to stretchers made out of branches and their clothes and tying them to the harness, when a large Incan dragon showed up, quickly revealing himself to be Churki, wanting to help them.

"And how can we know to trust you?" Hammond replied sceptically.

"We don't have a choice." Demane said. "We simply can't take Captain Laurence and Captain Granby with us for weeks while dodging the surely imminent Inca attacks, and expect them to survive. Look, Laurence is bleeding from his ears, and we don't even have a clue what that means, or what to do about it. We need a doctor."

"I know a very good surgeon who lives in a quiet mountain place and does not get many patients. He will help us, his _Ayllu_ has always been a friend to ours." said Churki, and that settled the arrangement. They were going south instead of east, unknowingly dodging the Incan dragons that had been sent after them.

The surgeon proved very helpful. He was a quiet man, living in a small wooden house with hundreds of different tools hanging from his walls. Some of them had an were recognizable, such as knives and saws, while others seemed more of a religious function.

The man began with Granby. He drummed with his fingers on the left side of his chest, and then on his right, the latter resounding distinctly hollow, like a tight drum. He muttered something in a Quechua dialect, grabbed a hollow straw with a pointy end, and to their shock stabbed it in Granby's chest, right next to the spear wound. Before they could ask him what he was doing, he put his lips to the end of the straw and sucked, blowing out air through his nose, kept sucking, and suddenly stopped and spew out a bit of blood. He drummed on Granby's chest again, and when it sounded healthy, sew both wounds closed and rubbed some thick herb paste on top.

He said something to Churki, who translated: "Collapsed lung. He will recover if he doesn't breathe too heavily before the wound has healed closed." None of the crew knew what a collapsed lung was but they were happy to have at least Granby back, who was breathing more powerfully and evenly now.

The surgeon inspected Granby one last time, and paused when he saw his arm injury. "It has to come off." he said.

The aviators were in shock and protested. Surely, it was only a mild wound, and the little discoloration was only a result of the oxygen deprivation. The surgeon sighed and showed them the wound, opening it up and pointed to a particular piece of tissue none of them knew, which was torn.

"The main nerve is torn. He will never be able to use his limb. It will only cost him energy, and I can take it off here more easily than you could do anywhere else."

"He has a point." said Forthing. Imagine if it infected and we had to take the arm off in the middle of the jungle."

The surgeon grabbed a saw from the wall and started sawing through the bone. The crew did not protest, but did not look either, and when the arm was off and the stump stitched closed, Granby looked a lot better than before, no longer blue and bloody.

He then went on to Laurence, examined his wound, and then said: "You are very lucky we are experts in this type of surgery, because healing him is going to be a lot harder than the other one."

Laurence was rolled on his chest, and the surgeon shaved and then cleaned his neck with water, before cutting the skin with one of the knives. When Laurence started moving again, he quickly took a potion from a shelf which he made him swallow, and afterwards he slept a lot more quietly.

His head was placed on a table with a face-sized hole, and immobilised in a vice. The surgeon cut more of the skin, making a hand-sized flap of it fall down on his lower back. Muscles and veins were visible, and he had to stop every few minutes to carefully absorb some blood with one of his many cloth towels, which he had the men wash and dry as he went on. With straps he moved the larger neck muscles out of the way and secured them, and only then had he uncovered the damaged area.

The bullet had hit the base of his skull, fracturing it and damaging several smaller muscles, which were close to ripping. The surgeon very carefully pushed those away as he examined the bone and removed the bullet, still stuck in the flesh. Several bone shards were removed, and one larger piece as well.

"Won't he need that bone?" Ferris asked, worried at the gaping hole in his skull, a soft tissue visible behind which the surgeon carefully avoided. He replied: "I have removed larger parts before. Head injury, fever, depression, anything can be cured by skull drillings. I must admit I am lacking experience on this particular part of the skull, but I heard descriptions of my colleagues recommending the treatment. 9 out of 10 patients survive this operation."

He then started layering the muscles back, rubbing more crème at several places, and then finally stitched the skin back in its place, cleaning it like he did with Granby's wound. He also fetched a rather particular wooden device around Laurence's neck.

"He will wear this cervical collar for a few days, and then he may take it off but he must not move his head too heavily for a long period of time. Several muscles are almost fully torn through, if he allows them to heal he will regain full mobility. He may get black skin around his eyes in a few days, and must try not to sneeze or cough when he does. He may also get deaf or blind, that may or may not be temporary. Just keep him well-rested and let nature take its course."

They paid the surgeon with one of the jewels stuck on Granby's coat, which he carefully examined but accepted, and then the crew and Churki, who Hammond was unable to get to leave, went for Rio.

Due to the blood loss, Granby recovered from his injury but kept getting tired very quickly. Laurence got marks one of the aviators described as raccoon eyes, and then got struck with fever. He was not often awake, and when he was he did not speak much.

Mrs. Pemberton once came to check on his black eyes, which were fading already. Laurence then looked at her, and said with a weak voice: "Edith, please ask Riley to take down the mainsail, I am sure we can fashion neckcloths for all hundred of them."

They could do nothing about his fever except dabbing his forehead with wet cloth, and water was hard enough to get by. That was, until Churki managed to lead them to a river, which would later join with the Amazon, or so he claimed. They followed him and the river, and by the time they reached the coast Laurence was getting increasingly more active and lucid.

It was not until his first day fully awake when he quietly inquired for Temeraire, and the news did not shock him greatly. He sighed, and sighed again, and sat alone by the river for three hours. None of the crew wished to tell him that it was time to leave.

Granby had reacted better to the news. With the goal of reaching Rio in his mind, he worked on getting fit again, and did not pause to think about his loss. He joined the crew in their daily activities after day four, even though he had to catch his breath often and was not much help in physical activities.

It was not until they reached Belém that Granby fell from his fragile pedestal of confidence. The crew was replenished with people from the city, and when one of the new members was building a campfire – a job Granby always did – he shouted at him to drop the branches and go do something else.

He later apologized, but was never as confident as before, and completely left the company of the crew, often sitting next to Laurence, who had only been getting worse. He would recite depressing poetry about his fate and soul to himself. The text itself was not that depressing, it was the way he said it, as a form of desperate self-assurance.

Laurence also had Mrs. Pemberton to talk to, who had lost her husband, which was at least partly comparable.

At long last they reached Rio, and discovered it as they had expected: in ashes. But a quick talk with Kefentse and Lethabo, as Mrs. Erasmus now liked to be called, had given the information that the Portuguese had done it themselves.

They went for the Portuguese crown prince, where Laurence was shocked at hearing their plans of attacking the Africans. and tried to convince them to learn to live with the Tswana, as even Kulingile alone could break their formations, as he demonstrated.

The arrival of Lily's formation finally got the negotiations between the Portuguese prince and the Tswana going, and about a month later everything was finally settled. Harcourt started making plans of leaving for Britain, on the _HMS Fortunate_ who had brought the formation there.

Laurence could not go. He had all but avoided company the past months, and did not feel like being stuck on a boat for five more, filled with people who could never understand him. Granby had started drinking heavily since the taverns in Rio started going back to business, and did not like going back either. He was the third sun of a coal-merchant, and had left for the Corps at age seven. His family did not knew him. Serving with other aviators, perhaps as a lieutenant once more, did not seem likely. He would always be the first British captain to have a firebreather, and then spoiled her, and then lost her. He had no honour, and he would not be able to give a potential son or nephew a leg up either. He would only diminish their chances if he stayed in service.

When Harcourt finally announced the formation's departure from Brazil, and invited him and Laurence to go as well, they did not speak a word. Instead they went to their cabins, packed their things, and went to Harcourt's office and both left a letter they had carefully prepared. They shook hands and walked away, Granby into the city, Laurence towards the harbour.


	8. Chapter 8

Temeraire had been flying for the place he last slept with Iskierka. The immense ecstatic feeling of his new vision on life had diminished with time, but only a little. Months of depression had been lifted, and he could not simply fly in a straight line, he corkscrewed, flew really high before folding his wings and dropping like a stone, only to reopen them at the last possible second, and enjoyed it with more pleasure than he ever had before.

The past time had been darker than anything he had ever experienced. Life had had no meaning to him. The only thing in his life not connected to the ever-present suffering had been Iskierka. And now he had opened his mind to the joy of living, and he would open hers, too.

It was going to be tricky, he knew that. Temeraire's own salvation had been in a moment of great emotional distress, and he did not yet fully understand how it had happened. What had started the mood was not clear either, his memory was quite foggy for things that had happened before the jungle. He was pretty sure that they had stayed with the Inca, and a memory of flying endlessly above cold waves reached him once. What they had done in the Andean civilization was missing from his mind, but it did not matter right now. What mattered was getting Iskierka to return from the depression as well, so they could think of a way to fix the problem, as soon as he could remember what that problem was again.

From right below the clouds he saw a big, circular, black spot in the endless green, and he dove right at it. In an attempt to eradicate the terrible monkeys, he had roared the trees down in a wide area around their sleeping ground, and Iskierka had burned them. This finally gave the two of them some well-deserved sleep, although he had not felt the joy of it: he had not felt anything.

Temeraire dove to the centre of the black spot, where Iskierka was lying quietly on the ground, as looking miserable as ever. Fresh cuts cluttered her left side, indicating a new feral attack, but she barely felt bothered by them as she turned over and looked Temeraire in the eye: a warm, inviting look on her face, but the rest of her posture indicated a great indifference to the suffering that surrounded her.

"I brought you a good fish." She was quite confused. Speaking was not done often between the two of them. There was nothing to talk about, and other information could be exchanged with looks and small gestures.

The confusion was even greater when he revealed what he had exactly caught: a young orca, weighing around two tons. Temeraire had killed it accidently while trying to sink the _Fortunate_, and rushing back to shore he spotted it from the corner of his eye and took it with him. He was very hungry, but wanted to make a good impression on Iskierka before beginning his story, so he had only nibbled a bit on the tail, the part of the whale he obscured with his talons.

This beast weighed about twice as much as a regular dragon of their weight would eat in a day, and five times what Temeraire and Iskierka had been eating in a day, on average.

"I'm not hungry." was the answer. It was true, neither of them had been hungry at all, eating was done when nothing else was to do. Temeraire quickly realised this, and pushed the orca aside for now. She was still depressed, she would be hungry when Temeraire had talked her out of it, he was sure of that.

"I saw a big British ship today. I attacked it, and…"

"They hurt you?" Iskierka interrupted, and before he could answer she climbed and sniffed all over him, stopping at a charred depression in Temeraire's forehead, where the skin was scorched much blacker than his current dark grey colour. "What did this?"

"Longwing acid."

"That should have burned all the way through and killed you. I would not have liked that." she said calmly, as if they were discussing the weather.

"It should have, but a man came to me and absorbed the acid with a piece of cloth. In return I did not destroy his ship."

"You _did not destroy_ their ship, when you had the chance? Why in the world would you do that?"

"He saved my live. I gave him something back for it."

"That's… kind, I guess…" Temeraire noticed he was losing contact with her with every word he spoke, and mentally backed away.

"I'm sorry." he flapped out. He then stopped talking, and retreated a few steps, leaving Iskierka in bafflement behind, while he was furiously trying to come up with a better plan of action. This was not at all going as he had planned.

Two hours went by, the sun was setting, and Temeraire still had no clue how to tell a person who did not care about either themselves or the world that they should. He then felt something warm against his side. Iskierka had lain her tail against him, an act that preceded their usual nightly entanglement. It was a sign of warmth and trust, and somehow the only sliver of positivity that had existed in their world. Temeraire could not accept it, and drew himself away.

"I can't take this from you anymore. We have to make plans. We have to be doing something other than lying around all day thinking of how cruel the world is."

"You can't take this from me? Did you think this was something you had to be subjected to by me to please me or something? And what plans are you talking about? There's nothing either of us can do and you know it as good as I do."

"Iskierka, please. I really, really like this connection we have established over our time in the jungle, but it's time to get out of the wicked place. We have to get to Rio."

A shiver went through Iskierka's spine when she heard that terrible word, long out of her mind but never forgotten. "You want to take me to those… cruel…"

"They are not cruel! I bet they only shot a pepper gun at your face because you lost so much weight and look like a feral!"

"We have been stuck here for months and you have been the only thing I could rely on. Now you come here after being gone not half a day, and you discredit the way I live – the way we have been living, you talk about getting me to hell on earth and you insult the way I look. What has gotten into you!?"

"Just eat the fish. You will feel better and you will understand what I am trying to tell you."

"The whole thing? I told you I wasn't hungry."

"I also thought I wasn't. Just do it, for me, if not for you."

Iskierka stared at him, and at the orca, and at him again, and then gobbled the whole thing up in under a minute.

"How do you feel now? Satisfied?"

"No." she said. "Bloated."

Temeraire felt a lump in his throat. "Please, let me think about it for some longer. I just can't stand the way you don't care about yourself, or the world, any longer. There's more to life."

Iskierka's voice turned cold as ice. "Let me explain to you then. This is how much I care about the world." and she shot her fire at least a hundred yards up in the air. "And this is how much I care about myself." She took the end of her tail to her mouth, picked out one of the larger spikes, put it in her mouth, and despite a visible struggle managed to break it off in with her powerful jaws.

She spew out the bone fragments with some blood and teeth. "And until you start acting normal again, this will also represent how much I care about you."

Temeraire went aloft quietly, but as soon as he was out of earshot, he furiously screamed and roared in all directions.

Iskierka lay down quietly, but as soon as he was out of earshot, she furiously screamed and spew fire in all directions.


	9. Chapter 9

The tavern was called _O negro puro._ Originally it was referring to the sanity of the kitchen slaves, but when the Tswana took over the owner hired those same slaves for a relatively fair wage and claimed that the name was actually about all the good things the Africans had brought to Rio, thus avoiding the need to buy a new sign, as the original one was already extensively decorated with gilded letters and many flourishes.

Granby entered with a miserable look on his face. He came here often, drinking a fortune's worth of alcoholic beverages which he paid for with some jewel or gemstone from his coat. They did not last long, as the Tswana had a long history of gem-cutting and valued the small Inca stones little, and because Granby was a heavy drinker. This time they were all gone. All of Iskierka's spending spree in an attempt to fancy up her captain had gone into ruining his liver instead.

He did not know how he would pay for his drinks this evening. He would, somehow, but jobs were hard to come by in the city with half the companies bankrupt and the other half having enough former slaves to pick from if they needed employees. Granby would find something. He was the third son of a coal-merchant and had surely inherited at least some of his father's trading instinct, he thought.

When he looked at the bar, he saw his usual seat, the one he had all but lived on for the last month, and went for it, but his name was called by a heavily accented voice from behind. When he turned around he saw that its owner was a tall, bearded man, who gave him a handshake that felt like it could squeeze the bones out of his fingers.

"It's good to meet you, Captain Granby!" And before Granby could correct him by saying that he was not a captain anymore, the man started introducing himself: "I am Cristóvão Diogo Alvaro Manuel Cabral, known to friends as just Cristó, formerly lieutenant of the Portuguese Navy, currently unassigned, and sent by Captain Catherine Harcourt to try to convince you to join the British Arial Corps once more."

Granby was temporarily dazed by his direct approach, but quickly recovered, and said without much enthusiasm: "Did she? Why would she send you and not go herself, or send another aviator?"

"Well, that's because captain Harcourt is a clever woman. She thinks that you made a stupid decision by leaving and are only bringing further misery to yourself, but realises that she can't be objective about the matter because she's also your superior, and wants to see you return. Sending another crew member would only put you off, since you would only weep that they don't understand your pain, while they claim that they do, and you'll just end up hating each other."

They sat down at a table. He paused his story to order a large plate of food from the barmaid. Cristó was very direct, almost rude, but not downright insulting. When he was done specifying how rare his steak ought to be cooked exactly, it seemed like he was about to talk again, but then a one-handed man entered the tavern, sat down in a corner, placed a small African drum in front of him and started singing while beating the rhythm with his one hand. His voice was not perfect but he had a likable attitude, and Cristó was fascinated by the sight and accompanied the drum by hitting the table with his fists. When the singer was done he applauded the loudest and longest of the audience.

His meal had arrived and while chewing he continued his story, as if nothing had interrupted him, while the singer sang another tune, a more quiet one this time.

"So Harcourt rounded up all the men in Rio she knew could speak English, which was no more than half a dozen, and when I turned out to be the most charming of the lot, she asked me to come talk with you to urge you to stop drinking and return to the Corps while she is on her way to Belém."

"Belém? I thought the _Fortunate_ ought to have sailed for Britain by now?"

"She was going to, but the darn Portuguese started making quarrels, and the northerners had not heard of the deal with the Tswana yet – or they did not believe it, it depends on who's telling the story – and they killed a bunch of them. Harcourt went to visit the coastal cities from Bahia all the way up to Belém to bring them the news, and brought a Longwing and a Regal Copper to "convince" them more easily. The Prince-Regent has also sent a representative on the ship with her."

Cristó was once again distracted as the singer started a rather catchy tune, and the tavern, having clearly heard the melody but not the lines before, hummed along, filling in the words where they could guess them. The lyrics, sung in Portuguese, were:

_Now here's an adventure, that happened to me.  
I was out, twenty thousand miles at sea.  
But I look at the land, and what do I see?  
A big red dragon, coming to eat me!_

_She had spikes all over. That beast was vast!  
Steam coming from spikes in a big blast.  
Fire from her mouth, it all went so fast.  
The crew was eaten, time for me at last!_

_But the pepper gun, I had it in my hand.  
The ship so suddenly undermanned.  
I was then given the high command.  
The ship was so-o-o-olely mine to defend._

_I heard her confuse me, in a thousand voices.  
To shoot or not to shoot, those were my choices.  
I shot, she dodged but could not evade mighty Pontes.  
I yelled bon voyage, and she retreated voiceless!_

When he was finished, Cristó erupted in laughter, and said to Granby: "What a marvellous story. Do you want it translated?"

Granby felt nothing for that, as he started to dislike Cristó's attitude. "No thanks, I would like to get to my seat and have a couple of drinks now." He started to get up, but the man pushed him down into his seat again with his powerful hand on Granby's shoulder, and said: "No, you first have to tell me your story. I was ordered to get you back in the Corps, and while I don't think that you should have to join if you don't want to, I would like to hear your reasons for leaving first. Men do all the wrong things if they don't bother to use reason for their actions."

"You would never understand it."

"But I'm not claiming I do! In fact, I know absolutely nothing of why you quit, all I know is that your superior wants you back. That's the major difference between me and any of those aviators. I would like you to do your best to convey why you think giving up your career is the right thing to do, before filling it in for myself."

"Okay. Cristovo Diego Alvoro…"

"Call me Cristó." he interrupted: "Before I shoot myself from hearing you mangle my name beyond all recognition between your British teeth."

"Fine, Cristó. You said you were a lieutenant. What would you do if your ship sank?"

"Well, that depends on numerous things. Whether it being my fault or not would be the most important one of them."

"Your ship was in the harbour," Granby started, thinking up the comparison as he went along: "in the harbour of a nation you were not allied with. But suddenly this nation turned against you and sank your ship, and you weren't there to prevent it."

"I must say that it sounds like there would be nothing I could do about it, and I should be happy to have escaped with my life!"

"Your child was on the ship. Or no, your wife, your subordinate, your colleague, your partner in crime, all in the same person, were on that ship. And it sunk, because you trusted the Inca – that nation – not to turn on you, despite the many notions that they were going to."

"I don't know what trouble you got yourself into, but if I had a criminal sailor below me who was also my daughter, I would not have married her!" Another thundering laugh erupted from the big man, but it quickly ended at seeing Granby's face starting to resemble a thundercloud.

"You must be in a mighty foul mood then. I sure would be bawling like a baby if something like that happened to me. But quitting the army is not the right thing to do just for that. Did you join it just for that wife-kid-colleague of yours, or to defend your country?"

Granby sighed. "I joined because my family could not support me."

Cristó tried another approach: "So all that time, years it must be, you constantly hated every bit of your career, and the one you lost was your only ray of sunshine in the world?"

"Of course not! I also enjoyed the company, and the feeling of doing something for my country, and only got her after I already had been long in service." At noting his puzzlement, he added: "She was a dragon, Cristó."

"A dragon? Okay then. I think I now get it. You lost your dragon, which was a ray of sunshine in your world, if not the only one, but an important part nonetheless. When you lost her, you got so sad that you can't enjoy the other pleasures of service no longer so you quit and spend a fortune on intoxicants since those are the only things that can take away your pain. Have I got that right?"

"Not quite, but I guess it's a fair approximation."

"Well, then you have me convinced. I can completely understand why you can't stand your colleagues and friends feeling sorry for you, and want away from them. But alcohol is not a solution. What you need is something to concentrate on. I know a ship, the _Faro_, the first trading ship to have reached the city since the Tswana took over. The crew got rich from selling the much-needed supplies, and they want to hire people to guard their gold on the way back. I was going to join it before Harcourt asked me to get you back, but now I think that mission is over. They are setting sail tomorrow, you could still get on board if you want to."

Granby was not enthusiastic: "Cristó, I don't speak one syllable of Portuguese."

"You don't have to! Ships hire foreigners all the time, because they ask less salary, and the few commands you will get I can teach you on our way. They will be sailing for Portugal, and from there it's only a small trip to England where you can visit your family again, if you want to. Anything's better than ruining your body with this vinegar folks call wine around here."

Granby knew deep inside that this was true. The wine did taste like vinegar. "Okay," he said: "I managed to convince you that I don't want to join the army, so it's only fair that you get a chance to convince me to follow your proposal. Let's go find captain…"

"Vargas." he said. On their way out, he asked, right as the door closed behind them: "I want you to tell me about your dragon, because it means a lot to you. What did she look like?"

One minute and forty-two seconds later Granby ran into the tavern, found Pontes quietly enjoying his meal, and put all his strength into a powerful punch to his face, before interrogating the confused sailor about the whereabouts of Iskierka.


	10. Chapter 10

Laurence lay on his back on the dragon deck, looking at the stars. A big black dragon lay next to him, asleep. When he turned over and revealed his stripes in a beautiful shade of orange, Laurence's mind could no longer support the illusion, and he stood up and walked to his cabin.

The _Leerdam_ was a Dutch ship, the first he saw that would take him anywhere near England. Not knowing a word of their strange language was all the better for him: he did not want to talk about anything, and the crew understood enough English for basic communication and commands.

Telling that he had been captain of a 36-gun frigate had earned him the position of midshipman on board of the dragon transport. It was a small one, with only place for a single dragon and not a heavy-weight, but big enough for the job.

The Dutch royals had been desiring a dragon in their national colour for quite some time now, and despite furious breeding the right shade had not been found. An agreement with Britain for a Regal Copper to breed with one of their brownish yellow Wentelwieks two decades back had failed, perhaps because of their vast difference in size, and the attempt to get a feral from Brazil had been interrupted by the Tswana in turn. But now that threat had been lifted, and the crew was ecstatic that their long-due project was finally underway.

"Why are you frowning, Mr. Laurence?" The captain was right behind him, in full uniform. "You should not be sad, even if you don't like dragons. We are eating _hutspot_ tonight." he said with a thick accent, referring to a dish that was a mush of potatoes and unrecognizable vegetables with a sausage.

"Excuse me sir, I have not been myself lately." Laurence replied, gesturing that he did not want to talk about it.

"I can't have a midshipman who is always in a bad mood. The sailors already don't like me for appointing a foreigner as one. Were you always in this mood on your _Reliant_?"

"No sir, I wasn't. I have just lost my wife." he said, thinking that that would more easily explain his behaviour. "I will try to be in a better mood, I promise."

"Don't just try that. Do it." and the captain laughed out loud, as if he had just told the best joke in the world. Laurence mechanically twisted up the corners of his mouth, but felt nothing.

Captain Reimers walked away, and Laurence could finally go inside his cabin. He took out his clothes, folded them on his desk and slept right away, dreaming of his new life. The Royal British Navy would probably not take him back, not after the treason: he just wanted to visit his family one last time before retiring to a far-away country. China was a good candidate, he still had a house there, albeit first occupied by Hammond as a makeshift embassy and later abandoned.

He could not simply continue working in the Aerial Corps as a low-ranking officer. He had not been properly trained for the job, and his five years of experience were nothing next to the other candidates, who had walked dragons since age seven.

Retiring to the English countryside would not do either. He knew too many people there, people who would see him either as a supposed-to-be priest who ran away, as a Royal Naval officer who gave up his promising career for a job in the widely discredited Aerial Corps, or as the dragon captain who lost the only celestial that Britain ever had or would have, along with their only firebreather.

Of course there was France, if Napoleon's offer of a mansion still stood. But Laurence would never be a turncoat, even without supporting the opposite party.

In China they would view him as the outsider who was somehow also their prince and had lost Lung-Tien-Xiang. He would be able to receive some compassion for his loss in a civilization built around dragons. Ms. Pemberton and he had become very good friends during his illness. Perhaps he could marry her so the Chinese officials would finally be satisfied. Perhaps.

A bell rang, waking him from his dreams – he had never been properly asleep anyway. He put on his things, opened the door and saw sailors rushing through the hallway. After following them to the deck, the way people walked and the places they went to told Laurence that the ship was under some kind of attack.

He went to the captain, who was giving out orders to hide the dragon under a big piece of oilcloth. "What's happening, sir?"

"Your fellow countrymen are going to attack us, that's what's happening! When Napoleon took over our country, your country took it as an excuse to start raiding our ships with theirs, and it seems like the so-called revolutionary dragon treatment Boney started has led them to believe it can also be done with those beasts."

"Excuse me sir, but I don't see any dragons in the sky. What has happened to make you believe that a formation is about to attack this vessel?"

"Not a formation. We spotted a single dragon in the air, with the British flag on it. It flew close by, close enough to read the name of our vessel. Those bastards probably have a small transport nearby, like ours, and use dragons to scout for us before calling in the British armada and taking us and our dragon we bought from Portugal for a fair price."

The third lieutenant joined the discussion: "I identified it as a Pascal's Blue, a French race. Of course it only makes sense that you bastards allied Napoleon, so he could screw us on land and you could screw us at sea."

Laurence noticed the change in the atmosphere. "Captain, sir, I believe there is plenty of officers here, my presence appears to be no longer required on deck."

"Leave, Laurence, before you do something unfortunate and the men will not even have you on board."

Laurence had another reason for wishing to leave the deck: there was only one Pascal's Blue of British nationality on the South American continent, perhaps in the whole world. He not would have expected Harcourt to resort to such methods of rehiring him, not after he had stated his reasons for leaving very clearly in the letter he had left behind, but had been prepared for it.

Shortly after, a big thumb indicated a dragon landing on deck, and the voices could be heard clearly from his hiding place. After he had verified that it was captain Harcourt looking for a certain William Laurence, he passed an envelope to a sailor asking him to bring it to the captain, and left with one of the sloops. He had already collected enough supplies and the proper navigation equipment to make it to Bahia and try to make it for England once more, hopefully slipping under Harcourt's watch this time. The envelope had contained a letter of apology and payment for the value of the boat.

She was on her own now. Not just alone for a little while, like when he went out hunting, but truly only dependant on just herself. Oh, how stupid he had acted, totally not like how he was. He would come back. It was only a matter of time until he recovered his sanity and they could spend more time together until death finally wiped them out. How stupid he was, for trying to tell her to care about things that were meaningless.

And why tell her to eat that stupid fish. The thing had just weighed her stomach down. If she truly lost _that_ much weight, she would have felt weak and hungry. And she wasn't. She could fly from here to China and back.

They could take that journey together.

She would do it all by herself, if she had to. He would only slow her down. Oh, how useless he was. Breaking his wing, failing to destroy a ship. And that stupid egg of theirs inside her would have died by now as well.

No, she was stronger than ever. That egg would grow up to be the best dragon ever, with fire and divine wind. Even if it turned out to be mediocre, it would be much better than he could ever be.

They could always make another one.

No. Celestials were hardly the best race in the world. Regal Coppers were massive, an egg with one of those would become a huge firebreather. Or Longwings. Acid and fire, to burn victims in two different ways. She sniggered at her own joke.

Or a Siu-Riu. Water and fire, possibly steam together? She already had steam. He had been telling her of those eastern legends constantly.

No. A Longwing was best. Perhaps the acid would mix with her steam, making their dragon spread out a poisonous cloud behind him? That sounded wonderful. Longwings were in Britain. Britain was an island. Islands were in the ocean. She knew where the ocean was. She went aloft, ignoring the strained muscle that was aching painfully, and flew out to the open ocean, heading for Dover Covert.


	11. Chapter 11

Temeraire stared, lying flattened on the top of the mountain, at the city below. So far, he had managed to avoid contact, but going closer would definitely get him spotted. It had to be done.

It had taken him two weeks to reach Rio. Their last encampment had been close to the ocean, and he knew that from there it was directly south to the great Portuguese city, currently partly in ashes and ruled by the Tswana. It was fourteen days of flying as hard as he could, but he tired frustratingly quickly and had to lie down to rest very often.

Over the last two months Iskierka and he had been united in fear of people. Every time either of them had spotted a harnessed dragon, they had covered up the bloody grounds left by their meals, and did their best to erase all other tracks, before rushing away from it as fast as they could. Now, he had to ask them for help.

A little dragon spotted him and went closer. She asked him a question in some African language Temeraire vaguely recognized but could not understand, and after noticing his incomprehension asked the same in Portuguese instead, which was not an improvement. Then she hissed and non-verbally urged Temeraire to go away. He did not move a muscle. She sighed and flew to the city.

A team of three heavy-weight African dragons replaced her in trying to get him to leave whatever it was they were guarding. He would not budge. They even tried grabbing him, presumably to carry him off and drop him in the ocean or something, but the agile Temeraire could easily evade their claws and still remain in roughly the same spot. When he felt that the show had lasted long enough, he roared fiercely at the sky above the city. This blew a hole in the clouds, and would definitely get him noticed by someone who spoke English, or so he hoped.

He had missed the three dragons on purpose, but they were still hurt by his roar and decided that he represented a danger outweighing the unpleasantness of having to murder a fellow dragon, and now went for the kill.

Fighting on the ground was hard, so he got up and flew away, circling around the top of the mountain while dodging the heavy-weight attacks. He was tired from the long days of flying and they were getting closer with each wingbeat. One of them dared to try to bite the tip of his tail off, Temeraire quickly retreated it and put even more effort in staying ahead of them.

Their fight was interrupted by a roar, but not his, it was a great Regal Copper who had entered the airspace and flew directly between Temeraire and the African dragons, while his crew were yelling words in broken Portuguese to get them to stop attacking. He recognized the orange giant from the _Fortunate_ engagement two months ago, and also vaguely from earlier, but that had no special significance to him.

When the African beasts were settling down to discuss the situation at ground level, Temeraire landed a little away from them, hiding behind the bushes. The Regal Copper followed, to his great discomfort.

"Temeraire, how good is it to see you! Are you crazy? Berkley told me you were, but I never believed him, but you acted so strangely the last time I saw you. Why did you attack the ship? We captured a few dragon transports from the French a little while ago, but this one is and always has been British. It will take us to Britain, and Iskierka can come too. Where is Iskierka? How did your trip through the jungle go?" and on and on he went, and Temeraire had to hiss to get him to finally shut up. "So you are still crazy? I am sorry, I think, I haven't spoken to crazy dragons before, except…"

"Shut it and back away, you big lummox! You're scaring him!" shouted a big man who climbed from the dragon's back and slowly stepped towards him.

"Temeraire, easy now." spoke a tall fellow who walked with him. "Temeraire, we will not be asking anything from you that you're uncomfortable with, but I need to know: is Iskierka still alive?"

Temeraire swallowed, drew a deep breath, and then spoke at a rapid pace: "Iskierka is alive but not all right, she has gone truly mad and does not want not to be mad, she is biting her own spikes off, oh it is terrible, some of you have to come and help me get her sane again."

The man closed his eyes for a few seconds. "We will," he said: "we will."

A third man joined the conversation. "Yes, I'm sure you would all like to rush off and go find that other dragon, but first you have to let me at least examine this one, if not improve his condition a bit. Temeraire, do you know who I am?"

"No."

"Well, that was to be expected. Temeraire, this man here," he pointed to the big fellow: "is Captain Berkley. He rides the dragon named Maximus, and I am their surgeon. Do you know who I am?"

He paused as he thought it over. "Yes, your name is Gaiters."

"Splendid! We will start working on your memory on our way there, but before we go I must oblige you to eat at least three cows immediately. If I hadn't seen victims of the dragon plague in worse condition, I would have considered euthanasia on the spot."

"Yes, I know I am hungry enough for four cows, but I really think we must get going anytime now."

"Oh, flying to the covert and eating a few pieces of cattle will not take _that_ long." but when he noticed Temeraire's discomfort he said: "Perhaps someone should bring them here instead?"

Temeraire nodded silently.

"Okay, I will fetch them for you. I'll be right back."

He and Berkley took off Maximus with Granby staying behind, who kept asking about how Iskierka was doing, to their mutual sorrow.

Maximus landed in the improvised covert, and Gaiters went directly for Harcourt, who looked up from a collection of maps and asked him: "Is it really him?" and when he nodded: "How is he?"

"His semantic memory is okay, episodic memory lost for the moment but not beyond recovery. I'm more worried about the emotional detachment, of which I don't yet know the extent, or if it's intentional or not. He whimpers when social interaction gets above what he can handle, the poor sod was panic-stricken when Maximus approached too closely. For now, his mind is obsessed with finding that Kazilik and curing her of madness, and I don't think we can make much progress on him before he completes that quest. He did not even mention his captain. The loss of Laurence must have triggered his brain fever. I think we should not talk about it to him on the journey, as the memory would only cause grieve at best, and psychiatric setback at worst."

"On the journey? So you're leaving?"

"As I said, one cannot expect him to think of much else, losing his close companion in such a traumatic fashion. We must let him complete this before asking things of him. I will be needing the smallest dragon you can provide who can carry four cows, also to hunt for him on the journey."

"Well, that would be one of the Yellow Reapers, but I sent them both to locate Laurence, a mission from which I only just returned. Perhaps I should go with Lily."

"I must strongly discourage that idea. The jungle can't fully support even him alone, and Lily is a large middle-weight. And you're needed in Rio."

"Berkley can take over that job for now, he has more experience in that field than I do, and a Longwing does not need as much food as you would think based on their size, with such large wings you hardly need flapping them and preserve energy. Also, Lily is a lot less extraverted than Maximus, or any of the Yellow Reapers for that matter. It will help him."

"You have a point. You would make a fine alienist."

"Too bad I'm already aiming for Admiral." she said with a smile. "But do you think he is physically up for the trip?"

"His weight has dropped to about twelve tons, I estimate, and he was already slender to begin with. Ribs, air sacs and even his vertebrae are very notable from quite a distance, and the wing muscle mass has dropped significantly. His black scales are fading to anthracite. He also has uncountable injuries that all need treatment. But we can do most of that on the way, if we bring extra bandages and other medical supplies, and I would not count on him staying here the six months I expect necessary for a full recovery."

"Then it's settled." She got up and started hastily arranging the paperwork needed for their expedition.

Laurence woke up from lying in his sloop, if it was even worthy of that term. It was a dinghy that happened to be in possession of a sail and rudder. The fog, which had aided him greatly in his escape, had stayed for at least four days, and a heavy wind following it had blown him severely off course. He would have to wait until the moon rose before he could find out his longitude, but using his sextant he had found out that he was in open ocean, dozens of miles north of Bahia.

He had supply for weeks, and could always catch fish, but the thought of landing on an unsafe coastline with feral dragons everywhere made him feel quite a bit uncomfortable.

A tiny, red dot north of him drew his attention. He grabbed his binoculars, and gasped when he recognized Iskierka. She was flying almost directly east, away from him, but the discovery of her survival brought a strange feeling to Laurence's chest. Despite her flying alone, in a direction that led nowhere near land, he _knew_ that Temeraire was out there. Temeraire always survived everything against all odds. Temeraire had found him two times, and would be looking for him right now. Perhaps Iskierka was as well.

Laurence mentally punched himself in the face at noticing his own foolishness of avoiding Harcourt when Temeraire might have already landed in Rio and she was simply looking to tell him the good news. How could he think she was so immature to deny him leaving the Aerial Corps after the death of his dragon? Other aviators had done so before, and Laurence was hardly a person the Corps could not do without.

He had flares with him, but Iskierka was not looking in his direction. Without a doubt in his mind, Laurence set a new course, following her to what appeared to be open ocean. Temeraire would be there. Temeraire was alive. He knew it.


	12. Chapter 12

Temeraire was alive, and going in roughly the same direction along the Brazilian coast. He and Lily had been flying for twelve days, and the distance travelled was large enough to notice a change in climate, but Temeraire was not satisfied. The stopping and catching his breath every three hours was a major annoyance for him, and so was having Lily hunt for him while he rested.

"Eat it." she said, tired of him looking doubtfully at his third deer that morning. "Put away your stupid pride and eat the damn thing."

"It is not pride, I am just feeling really uncomfortable lying around as you do all the flying, while _I_ am the one who is insisting on travelling as quickly as possible, and eating so much of all the animals _you_ brought me, while you eat much less than I do, and it feels like I'm stealing it from you."

"You're not stealing it from me because I am giving it to you. Remember when I was sick and we were on the _Allegiance_ and you caught fish for me and the others and urged us to eat it even though we weren't hungry, and felt awkward because we hadn't caught it ourselves? Now you are sick and must do the same. So eat the deer so you can fly some more and get to your stupid Kazilik a lot quicker than you would if you were to wait an hour before every meal."

Temeraire grunted, but the reprimand worked and he ate the deer.

Later that day, after his daily talk with Gaiters, Lily came to him again. "I want to apologize for spraying acid on you."

"Oh, you shouldn't, you had every reason to. In fact, I want to thank you for mostly missing me that second time." Temeraire said, as he pointed to the wound on his forehead, now covered by a bandage. They were everywhere on him, and rustled when he flew.

"I never miss anything. I never intended to hit you that second time, and just apologized for doing so. I never thought you would have destroyed the ship, and you didn't."

She then spoke a bit more quietly. "I also want to tell you something. Catherine told me not to tell you, but I think that this is important, and it is based on a deal we and Maximus struck years ago. You need to know that Laurence, your captain, is alive, and Messoria, Immortalis, Nitidus and Dulcia are looking for him on the sea."

Temeraire was confused. "But I am pretty sure I saw him dead, a bullet wound in the head!"

Lily shushed him. "Quiet! They can hear us. Laurence survived the wound, and together with Granby and the rest he escaped the Inca. He then became ill and later depressed, and left the Corps, and now he took a sloop from a ship he was working on and is missing. But we will find him, I promise you. That's the deal we struck, to support each other in case something happened to our captains."

Temeraire's head was now cleared up. "Well, that's good news. I really ought to go see him after we find Iskierka."

Lily sighed, and then walked away. In Africa, not even fierce persuasion from a superior had kept him, her and Dulcia away from their missing captains. No dragon healthy of mind would go in the opposite direction, on purpose.

Whittaker had also spoken to Temeraire, who recognized him instantly and thanked for bringing him back from the abyss of depression.

"It was no big deal. Frankly, Harcourt thought it was stupid of me and demoted me for it." he said with a sad smile.

"Oh, why does everyone who helps me keep losing their ranks!?" was Temeraire's downhearted reply, and he his mood took a turn for the worse.

In the late evening of the next day later they finally arrived at the scorched forest surrounding Iskierka's last known location. Of course, she was nowhere to be found.

"Maybe she has just gone hunting? It has been four weeks, after all, even she would get hungry after that time."

"No, this ground has started to get mossy again. No dragon has been here in quite some time." said midwingman Whittaker. They went back to the coast, where Temeraire quietly ate his fish, and then lay down and fell asleep.

Gaiters said: "This is not an optimal position for him to be in. Without fulfilling his quest, progress will be much, much slower and it may get him depressed once more. He needs a distraction. Perhaps we should inform him of his captain's fate, so he can focus on reaching him instead of Iskierka, and he can aid in the rehabilitation process."

Lily heard that and said: "But I already told him. He remembered Laurence, but did not care much about him. He must be crazy."

Gaiters was shocked. "That's… very disturbing news. Complete emotional detachment. Perhaps even irreversible. I will have to think for a bit before I know what to do about this."

Temeraire, who had only been pretending to be asleep, stood up and said: "If you all think I'm crazy, then maybe it's best if I go look for Iskierka on my own." And before anyone could say something, he flew away.

"Should I go after him?" Lily asked.

"No, he needs to do this. We can only hope for him to return afterwards."

Fernando Pontes was lying on the ground, ten miles north of Temeraire's location, desperately trying to figure out what to do.

The _Faro_ had sunk. About two weeks ago, they were returning from Rio, back to Portugal, cargo filled with gold, just as he had promised. The whole crew was joyful from the success of their trip, and Pontes was at the centre of all attention. The captain had spoken in private with him, suggesting a promotion to lieutenant, which Pontes had happily accepted. Even Bento was happy, because, being first lieutenant himself, he would get a big share of the profit.

Of course the red dragon had to ruin it for them. It appeared on the sky once more, Pontes recognized the beast, and ordered no action to be taken against her. His brief but fierce encounter with her captain was still fresh in his memory.

The dragon came closer without making any evasive manoeuvres, just as before. They now had a new crewmember who spoke English, and he was quickly called on deck to try to figure out what she wanted. But then she did not say anything, but simply set the entire ship on fire. Pontes had stared at it flying away in shock.

Everyone was taken completely by surprise. Most of the crew had already come on deck by the time the gunpowder exploded, but three men were still inside and got severely injured. They had only been half a mile from the coast when it happened, but it was still disastrous, so far from any port, on the edge of the jungle filled to the brim with wild beasts and poisonous plants.

Captain Vargas had ordered the crew to take turns diving to the wreck, and collect all the gold and supplies and bring it to shore, where they had set up several tents. What they would do with it was a mystery, and their food was running low. Walking to a nearby port would take more supplies than they could carry, and none of the crewmembers knew which plants or animals were safe for eating.

Pontes knew that this was his fault. _He_ had ordered the crew not to attack Iskierka, as he knew the dragon was called. Vargas had said nothing, but the sailors did not scruple to scold at him for his bad decision, and he knew he deserved the insults ten times over.

So when another dragon appeared on the sky above the ocean, Pontes was in severe doubt what to do. It was another heavy-weight, but so slim it could have been a feral as well. They had brought the pepper gun from the ship, to use against ferals from the jungle, and had carefully been drying gunpowder to be able to fire it.

The big black dragon went right for them. "Pontes, we would like your orders." said the captain, no emotion whatsoever slipping through his voice. Why did he ask him to make the decision? Was it a reprimand? A chance to redeem himself? Would they even listen to him if he decided not to shoot the dragon down?

Pontes carefully considered his options. If it was not a feral and he shot it, he would have another dragon captain mad at him. If it was a feral and he did not shoot it, he and his crew would get eaten.

"Orders, Pontes."

What if the dragon had something important to say? Something more important than the lives of him and his crew?

"Pontes, if you don't decide whether to shoot it or not right now, I will give the order myself, and hang you afterwards!"

He had to make a decision. "I will shoot him down. Load the pepper gun!"

Captain Vargas looked him in the eyes, but said nothing.

The dragon went closer and closer. It started talking, yes it was English, just like the other one, but Pontes could not hesitate and shot the pepper canister, which hit the dragon right on the snout. It started sneezing and coughing and tearing (just from the pepper), and every sneeze sounded like a miniature earthquake, of which they felt the shockwaves going through the air.

Still, the black beast went for them. Every sneeze launched him a feet or so backwards, but the large wings pushed him towards them at a very high speed. There was no time to reload the pepper gun. It was going to eat them all.

"Men, grab your muskets." the captain commanded.

"No, don't shoot it!" shouted Pontes. No feral would keep attacking them after a pepper gun shot to the face. It was either crazy or had something really important to tell them. Or perhaps both.

Captain Vargas looked at him. "Obey the gunner." he said quietly, but still audible for the crew. "Cristó!" Pontes yelled, calling for their only crewmember who spoke English.

The dragon was very close now, and started talking again, between his sneezes and coughs. Cristó translated: "Oh, why did you shoot me? Do I really look like a feral? I may be a bit overlong for my weight, but that's no reason to shoot pepper at me. Have you seen Iskierka?"

"If you're talking about the red demon who took down our ship, then yes!" yelled Vargas, barely following him.

"Did she burn your ship? Where and when? Where was she headed? It was very stupid of her to do that, but she was crazy and I am sure she will apologize when she's sane again."

"That beast nearly killed all of us! If you think…" but Pontes interrupted Vargas and quickly said: "She was here on the coast thirteen days ago. You can see the mast of our ship still emerging from the water. She flew directly east afterwards."

"Thank you very much!" Temeraire said, and flew away rapidly.

"Wait, we need help, can you talk to someone…" yelled Pontes, but the dragon was already out of earshot.

"I found her, I found her! Well, I did not find her, but I know where she went! We must get going and look for her right now!"

Half of the aviators, including Lily, sighed. "Where did she go then?" asked Harcourt.

"I found a group of people who had seen her, and they said she went directly east from the coast ten miles north of here. If we go in an angle, we might catch up to her!"

"She left weeks ago, and headed towards open ocean. What do you think happened? If her condition was anything like yours, she would have dropped in the sea after about four hours, at most, and then drowned. It was an act of suicide!"

Temeraire blinked, but did not speak. Granby swallowed.

"You know," Whittaker started: "there are a few remote atolls on that part of the sea. Maybe she landed and got stuck on one of those."

"Oh, don't start giving the beast hope. That is a much less convenient emotion to work with. He will never obey us if he thinks she is still out there."

"Then it is much easier to get him rid of all hope by showing him miles and miles of empty sea." said Gaiters: "In fact, that may just fix his emotional detachment. He will need somebody to talk with about this incident, and by then we will have the captain back, ready to take that position."

"Okay then. He may fly as far as his wings can carry him, and then we go back."

"Sounds fine to me." said Temeraire, ready to go immediately. But of course Whittaker had to make everyone sigh once more by saying: "You just flew twenty miles. If you rest for a little bit now, you will be able to search for Iskierka much longer later." to which Temeraire agreed.

Harcourt looked at Whittaker, and said: "As far as his wings can carry him. No farther."


	13. Chapter 13

They flew endlessly, it seemed. Temeraire had flown longer distances before, but this somehow felt like more. They had spotted one atoll already, and fully explored the islet, but it had showed no sign of draconic presence or recent habitation. He went on, followed by Lily, who flew a little behind him.

After three and a half hours, he started panting. After four hours, his wingbeats grew weaker, and he fell down between them, not always regaining the loss of altitude afterwards. After four and a half hours, he mostly glided above the waves, not always missing the water. He was wet, cold, and very, very tired.

"We must go back." Lily said, as she flew down to his level.

"No." Temeraire said with a weak voice.

"Yes." Lily said, more insistently this time. "You can rest for a while on that island there, and then we must turn around."

"Island?" Temeraire started beating his wings again, and quickly went for the atoll he had not noticed because he had been flying so low.

A circle of charred trees blew new hope in Temeraire and Granby, and just when Harcourt had started with: "Perhaps a forest fire, initiated by a lightning strike…" they saw Iskierka, in the middle of the ashes, covered in blood.

"Iskierka! Are you all right?" shouted Temeraire and Granby in unison, to which Iskierka lifted her head up and replied: "There you are! Of course I am all right, this island does not look nearly large enough to have ferals, don't you think? These stupid dolphins are so hard to catch that I made a bit of a mess, and I haven't had time to clean myself up yet. What took you so long?"

"You started eating again?"

"Well, obviously I need to eat. When I was flying to Britain, I kept saying to myself that it was stupid what you said about eating more and caring about myself and did all I could to prove that the exact opposite was true. But when I landed here and spotted a tasty dolphin, I decided that I ought to ignore what you said altogether and just do what I wanted to, and right then I wanted to eat, so I ate it and then four more which were lingering in the bay, and I felt satisfied, so I started eating again."

"But that's just what I said." said Temeraire, with mixed emotions.

"And I figured it out all by myself." she said, obviously very pleased with herself. "But tell me, why did it take you so long? I don't recall leaving instructions to go wander around aimlessly for weeks before taking your sweet time getting help. I thought you had just thought up that that was a bad idea."

"You said that you did not want to see me anymore! I still flew as hard as I could to Rio, and got help, and even brought you Granby back!"

"And you did not listen to me, like you never do. And the getting help part took you weeks! I was nearly out of animals to eat on this stupid island! It seems to me like you weren't really trying. Now where's my Granby? Did you at least succeed in bringing him back in one piece?"

"Right here, my dear." Granby said, but Gaiters interrupted him and said: "Wait a second. Iskierka, do you know who I am?"

"No, I haven't met you before. But I think I saw Lily before, briefly when she and her formation were going with the Allegiance to get medicine in Africa, about four years ago, I think."

Gaiters pondered it over for a split second, and then said: "Well, her memory looks fine, and social interaction as well, sort of, but as with any dragon the best news is that she's eating properly. I dare to call that sane. _Captain_ Granby, she's all yours!"

He and Iskierka started conversing enthusiastically, telling each other of their journey. Temeraire was just stunned. He barely saw Laurence yelling his name, who ran to him and hugged his front leg.

"Temeraire! I am so glad to have you back! Where have you been all this time?" When he noticed the lack of reply, the look on the dragon's face and what he was staring at, he did not understand what was going on, but decided to just sit on his leg, and wait until he was ready to speak.

"Laurence. It's good to have you back too." said Harcourt, who had only just noticed him.

"Thanks, I'm glad as well. I want to apologize for leaving the Corps and then avoiding you. The latter was very childish of me. I was with my boat among these islands, knowing that Iskierka had to be on one of them, but uncertain which, until I saw you two fly over and I followed you here."

"So I take from this that you're joining the Corps again? I don't know if I can hire you back after your recent behaviour." she said sarcastically, and Laurence smiled and said: "I can only hope."

Temeraire did not talk to him until the next morning, when they were getting ready to leave.

"Laurence, she is back to normal. I should be glad of that, but somehow I am not."

"She can be pretty recalcitrant, yes, but I thought you already knew that. Have you developed… feelings… for her?" Then Temeraire told him the whole story, everything from finding Laurence apparently dead to Iskierka biting her spike off and his long journey to Rio, and back to this island, and he told him all the emotions he had felt in those five dark months.

"I just don't understand how she can blame me, after all we've been through together…"

Laurence replied calmly, still pondering as he spoke: "I don't think she really blames you anything. It's just in her personality to be like that. She can only be really cooperative in emergency situations, otherwise she won't listen to anyone."

Temeraire did not like that description. It was not at all what he had had in mind.

Laurence added: "Just look at her and Granby. She cares for him, and he for her, but she will still do whatever she wants if she feels like it benefits her, like marrying him off to the Incan empress."

"But Iskierka would never hurt Granby."

"I don't think she intended to hurt you either. She has a very strong personality, and needs another strong personality to keep her in bounds."

They looked at Iskierka, who was sniffing at Granby's arm stump. "Is there anything we can do about that? Will it grow back?"

Granby laughed. "No dear, arms don't grow back. I can get a hook, though. That will aid me greatly in climbing on top of you. I would have gotten one sooner, but I did not have the funds to have one made."

"Oh, I know how to get funds! I saw a few whales on my flight here, and if we can catch one of them, they will be worth money, right? I will get you a golden hook, with jewels around the edges, and…"

"No Iskierka, I am afraid I will have to stop you there. We can't get a golden hook, because gold is a weak and flimsy metal, no matter how pretty it looks. It would only get stolen, and besides that: I don't want to look excessive anymore."

"But I don't want you to look excessive!" she said, a bit unsure about the definition of the word. "I only want you to look respectable."

"Iskierka, I am the dragon captain of the only firebreather in the British army, an egg worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. What more respect do I need? Shiny things don't improve my stature, they make me look like I am compensating for something. If you want to spend money on me, we can better get a hook out of the finest steel in the world. I am sure it will be even better than Laurence's sword."

Both happy with the compromise, the subject of their discussion changed to metallurgy.

Laurence carried on, making sure Iskierka did not hear what he said: "You can give much love, my friend, and that is a great property found in few. But blind adoration is just not what works for a person like Iskierka. Someone in a relationship with her would need to be able to argue with her, without hating her. Even Granby sometimes has trouble figuring that out, like with the Inca business."

"Temeraire, Granby said you once read a book about mineralogy. Do you know where the best iron ore comes from?" asked Iskierka, inviting him to her and Granby's discussion.

Temeraire replied shaky with a simple no, to her confusion.

The journey back led them via Captain Vargas and his man, still stranded on the beach. The three dragons offered to carry them and their gold to the closest harbour, which they gladly accepted. Iskierka demanded two-fifths of the gold she carried, seeing it as a fair price. Temeraire quietly said that it was unfair, as she was the one who had sunk their ship, but she replied that she had only done so because they had shot her down, and that sinking their ship made it equal, which in turn made carrying the gold a wholly unrelated matter. Harcourt and Vargas had reluctantly agreed, valuing her cooperation higher than her morals. Temeraire had not responded.

The rest of the journey back went over fairly quickly, and without any unusual events, except that Temeraire would not speak much. If he did, it was a few words with Laurence, but never with Iskierka, who kept going on and on about all the jungle adventures she and Temeraire, but especially _she_ had gone through, describing her bravery at taking a pepper gun shot to the snout. Temeraire would never mention that he had endured the same treatment in his quest for her. Gaiters was satisfied, as long as he could remember everyone's names and would eat his deer, which were getting scarce despite Lily's best attempts at hunting for the two underfed heavy-weights and herself.

It was not until the day before they reached Rio that the situation would be spoken of to Temeraire a second time, and it was, unexpectedly, by Whittaker.

"Temeraire, you have to snap out of this state of diffidence. You are feeling down because Iskierka won't acknowledge you. That is her fault, not yours. If it is her desire to completely forget whatever happened between the two of you over the last five months, then that indicates a fault in her personality. Because this is a personal matter, you can take two options: confront her about it, or don't, but don't let this struggle between the two of you affect your general behaviour too much. It's not worth it. She's not worth it."

Laurence looked at their conversation from a distance, but decided against interfering: Temeraire was mature enough not to be too easily manipulated, like Rankin had accused him of doing with the poor neglected Levitas, all those years ago. In fact, he had no clear opinion in the matter, and knew the value of hearing different opinions whilst forming your own.

Temeraire, in a moment of equanimity, decided that he would take his advice. He started talking again, to everyone but Iskierka, and his confidence rose to the point where he could handle a conversation with Maximus the next day, who was in joy at seeing him back.

"Maximus, I am very glad to see you again. I want to apologize for the way I acted while I was crazy. I can hardly believe I nearly killed hundreds of men."

"Temeraire, you were crazy back then, and now you aren't." and he gave him a nudge with his nose. "That's all that matters. What happened on your journey through the jungle?" Temeraire gave him a plain description of their escape from the Inca, the monkeys, the ferals and the giant anaconda, and Maximus was satisfied.

The other dragons of Lily's formation joined them and he had to tell the story all over again. Most of them noticed that he left out parts of it, but did not ask for them, and they still had a good conversation and Temeraire enjoyed the company.

Gaiters was satisfied. Both dragons were gaining their weight back, Iskierka a little quicker than Temeraire, as she felt less scruples against gorging herself on four cows every day. But what would confuse and later annoy her greatly was his continuing refusal to talk to her. He was not being intentionally rude, but would never dare to look at her for longer than a moment, or speak words longer than a single syllable.

His feelings for her were complicated. She represented recalcitrance of the worst form: selfishness. It was not disobedience for a higher goal, only a way to improve herself. Every decision she had made had only been for her own good. All the kind things she had ever done to anyone else were surely only actions of self-interest. There was no reason at all to like her.

Yet, sometimes that attitude resulted in an action that somehow, however faintly, resembled the opposite of that: caring. Decorating her captain in jewellery could be seen as an extension of self-care, since Granby was as attached to Iskierka as her tail was, but one time she had mentioned to Temeraire that he ought to have his breastplate polished. What had been behind the notion? Was it an insult? Was she, after over two years of company, starting to see him as her property? Was it perhaps vicarious selfishness, if such a thing even existed?

Whatever feelings had stirred between them had been abandoned in the first days of their jungle adventure. Surviving in that hostile environment had meant they had to rely on each other at all times. The same form of companionship had arisen as in their Australian expedition, but even more strongly, the loss of their captains and their mission for Rio uniting them. The depression after the _Faro_ had attacked Iskierka had turned the companionship into affection, and the lack of verbal communication made their usual quarrels fully absent, keeping the affection alive.

Temeraire had not counted on her selfishness returning with her sanity, and had been wholly unprepared for it. He did not know how to respond to what would originally have made him angry. Arguing back, like he would have done five months ago, was not an option, as he simply did not want to be angry at her. It was the opposite of the affection he had shyly enjoyed, and could even end it.

But Whittaker's suggestion had opened his eyes. If Iskierka would not acknowledge the emotional part of their adventure, then it was not worth it to keep worrying about it, and he pushed the matter to the back of his mind, where it lingered but no longer disrupted him.

When Gaiters after a month of rehabilitation finally announced that the two of them were fit enough for a long sea journey, Harcourt started stocking up the _Fortunate_ for their departure for Britain. But then Gong Su spoke up about actually being an agent of Prince Mianning, and showed them the letter that he had kept with him all this time, even when Temeraire was presumed dead, as one does not simply get rid of a letter from the Imperial family.

On the evening before they would leave for China, Granby sat next to Laurence on a bench looking out to the harbour. "I have never seen Iskierka like this before. Insecurity was never in her dictionary. She never tells me anything about her feelings, but I believe she is afraid she has somehow insulted Temeraire, and furious that she doesn't know how."

Laurence replied: "I am not completely sure about Temeraire either, but I believe that this may be at least partly my doing. After he met Iskierka on that island, he was frightened by her usual self, as he had envisioned a different version of her in his mind, one which can only exist in his mind. I talked to him, stating that perhaps they just weren't right for each other. He may have taken that advice too literally, and broken all contact because of that. I must say that I myself don't know of any solution for this awkward situation, except for complete separation. Perhaps she should go back to Britain while he goes to China."

After more discussing, Granby started to agree with him, and they made way to hear what Harcourt and Gaiters thought of their proposal. They stopped in their steps while they saw Iskierka confront Temeraire directly. She had not done so ever since reprimanding him for bringing Granby back without his arm, a day after he had found her back.

"Temeraire, I want you to come with me. We need to discuss some things, and I want a bit of privacy."

"No."

"And why not? Why exactly!?" was her severely nettled reply. The last word even bordered on desperation.

"I don't know. I don't care. Leave, please."

Laurence quickly paced to his dragon and whispered in his ear: "Listen to her. You must talk this over some time, and now she's offering to do it in private. Do it."

Temeraire looked at him, blinked, and went aloft, following Iskierka who had already been on her way to a quiet valley some distance from the city, where their only audience would be the trees.

Iskierka started: "Now you must tell me why you have been avoiding me all this time. If you wish to think that all the emotions in the jungle were simply the result of madness, that's fine with me. But even before that you never acted this rude. We would always talk about things, you would disagree with me, and we would argue. That's how it went, and it was fine. But when we get just a _little_ closer, you choose to let that go the minute you have the chance. Were you just enduring me all the time?"

This surprised Temeraire, who had been thinking the exact opposite. "You are making no sense! You have been the one who was trying to forget our adventure, except for the parts you wanted to mention!"

"And by not mentioning any of the things you did, I was inviting you to join the conversation! If Lien wasn't the one who almost killed my Granby, I would have agreed with her when she called you barbaric!"

Temeraire only chuckled. "She was never behind the attack. Her plan all along was for me and my captain to suffer as much as possible, so I seriously doubt she ever gave the order to kill me. I merely said she did it to get you out of your stupid blood rage and into the jungle, to safety!"

This only made her more angry, but the memory of their first few moments in the rainforest sparked realisation: "I get it. I get it now! You felt _responsible_ for me! That's why you brought back Granby, so he could relieve you of your terrible, terrible duty of being in my company!"

"That's not true." said Temeraire, but he could not continue as Iskierka interrupted:

"It is true! You feel responsible for me whenever I make decisions you think are stupid. When I made the _stupid_ decision of hatching in the middle of a battlefield, you felt _responsible_ and carried me all the way to England. When I made the _stupid_ decision of going to London to get prizes from the French, you felt _responsible_, so you went back with Laurence and he got me out with Granby. When I was arranging for Granby to marry Anhuarque and me to mate with Maila, you thought it was _stupid_, so you mated with me to get me off the idea, and you will hate the egg when it comes. All the time in the jungle, you thought it was my fault, because I was _stupid_, and it was again your _responsibility_ to get me out of there. And finally, when I went fully mad, you wanted to get rid of the _responsibility_ you had oh so dutifully carried all the time, so you flew as fast as you could to Rio to get Granby to take me back, and when he did you could finally be rid of me so you stopped talking. That's how and that's why it has happened!"

Temeraire had been listening with mouth wide open, but now regained confidence and said calmly: "That's not _completely_ true."

"Then what _is_ true?"

"I carried your egg and later you all the way across Europe because I did feel responsible for you, simply because Laurence gave me that mission. I helped get you out of London because I felt responsible for you, as you were my subordinate at the time, and as your commander I _was_ responsible for your actions, like Wellesley told me. That part is true."

"Okay." Her face was completely void of emotion.

"The rest of what you claimed is not true. When you were going to mate with Maila, I did so instead because you talked me into it. When we were in the jungle, I stayed with you because I needed your help, like with getting that splint on. And when you went fully mad, I flew as fast as I could to Rio and back…" He pondered over the last bit for a few seconds, before explaining: "I think it was because I care for you. Or I did back then."

Iskierka was not convinced. "I don't believe you." she said simply. "I don't believe you ever cared one thing for me, or you would not be acting this rude all the time." Rather than recalling any of the countless examples, Temeraire shrugged and then proved it directly. It took all night.

It was their third day on board. Temeraire had caught a rather peculiar rainbow-coloured fish, and showed it to the dragons. Iskierka was not interested in the least, but the others gazed at it with much curiosity, until Kulingile ate it. Then Temeraire looked up and saw that the Kazilik was now spreading her seemingly endless tail across half the dragon deck, including the place at the prow were he always lay. A long discussion about proper deck positions followed, and only after many arguments and severe persuasion would she replace herself slightly to allow him half of his original spot.

It had sounded to everyone like a tiring ordeal, and even the fiercest debater would not call it a pleasure. But if you looked very carefully and at the right moment, a small hint of a smile could for a split second be seen on Iskierka's face, and it mirrored the even fainter one on Temeraire's. The discussion had been finished without hateful feelings in the end, and a compromise was made. To the ignorant observer it was simply a return to their original relation, with the endless quarrels, if a bit more respectfully perhaps. But Laurence and Granby saw the affection in their dragons' eyes, and felt happy for them.

"How long will it last, you think?" asked Laurence.

"I am no expert in dragon relationships, but I don't think anyone in Europe ever wrote even a pamphlet on the subject. If dragons are anything like humans, I would give it a few months at most. We can only hope it ends respectfully for both parties, like their quarrels now do."

"They are still vastly different beings. I don't know what will happen, should they ever fail to come to an agreement about something."

Gaiters stepped up to them from behind, not caring much that he revealed by that that he had been eavesdropping, and spoke: "I think it has to do with the hormones. The female will likely get tired of him in about a year."

"What hormones?" asked Granby, confused.

"Well, the maternal ones, of course! Dragons, much like humans, develop strange behaviours while they have an egg in the making."

"Egg?"


End file.
